update Qantas employees have reportedly turned down jobs offered to them by IBM as the flying kangaroo attempts to move forward with its outsourcing plans.
The airline had earlier decided to outsource more of its technology function to IBM, which in turn offered just under 200 Qantas staff jobs within its ranks.
However, only around 50 of the 178 staff offered positions had taken Big Blue up on its offer, according to the Australian Services Union (ASU), confirming a report earlier today by the Australian IT.
"For a number of people there were concerns about conditions in IBM," Lauren Hutchins, ASU organiser said. "Others just wanted a clean break." She said that it would have been difficult for employees to be working on the same job, but not as a Qantas employee with the associated conditions, but as a contractor.
The workers would undergo a longer than expected knowledge transfer process because of the low take-up of the offer. Then those who had opted not to take the positions would be made redundant. This was set to occur by December, Hutchins said.
At the time of publication, IBM had not yet responded to requests for comment.
The airline has increasingly been handing off internal IT work to external suppliers. In June, Perth-based IT services outfit ASG Group revealed it had signed a five-year, $13 million deal with Qantas to provide application management services around the airline's financial reporting and planning applications.
The contract added to another deal that ASG had signed in 2006 to provide IT systems integration and management services for the airline's eQ Finance project. In April, Fujitsu won a five-year deal to provide Qantas with all of its user-facing services for both domestic and international operations. The deal sees Fujitsu provide and support all Qantas desktop, email, storage and collaboration systems in Australia and overseas.
I don't blame them. Who would want to line up as lambs to the (offshore) slaughter?