kabarsula Qantas to cut 850 corporate jobs in Accenture’s India outsourcing deal bandar SLOT INDONESIA

Qantas will outsource finance, procurement, people and marketing functions to Accenture, with roles affected across the group from mid-2027.

Qantas will cut about 850 corporate roles over the coming years under a multi-year partnership with Accenture that will see some functions delivered by the consultancy’s teams in India.

In an email to staff on Tuesday, chief executive Vanessa Hudson said the first phase would cover finance, procurement, people and marketing, with Accenture delivering services mostly from India and partly from Australia. The first changes are expected to be in place by mid-2027.

“I know this is hard news for some and I’m sorry for the uncertainty it brings,” Hudson said.

She said the changes were about modernising the technology behind the business and becoming more efficient, noting Qantas runs on more than 1000 legacy applications “never designed to work together”. Hudson said “reinvention was not possible to do on our own”, describing Accenture as a long-term partner with tens of thousands of data and AI specialists and experience working with other airlines.

Individual outcomes have not been determined, with Qantas to consult affected employees and their union over the next few months. The airline said it would look to redeploy as many people as possible through retraining, reskilling and new roles in Australia.

Hudson also pointed to growth elsewhere in the group, with more than 4400 new operational roles created since 2023 and thousands more expected as the fleet expands.

Unions push back

Australian Services Union assistant secretary Scott Cowen said sending more jobs overseas was “not in the spirit of Australia” and that the union’s priority was keeping as many roles as possible onshore. The ASU was meeting members on-site on Tuesday.

Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine was more pointed, saying Qantas continued to find “new ways to degrade the spirit of Australia beyond recognition”, and referring to the airline’s previous illegal outsourcing of thousands of workers.

Qantas shares rose 4 per cent in morning trade on the ASX to $9.68.