Closing the loopholes in aviation: The limits of Same Job, Same Pay in fragmented corporate structures

A significant development within the Qantas Group is delivering the kind of outcome Australia’s industrial relations reforms are intended to achieve, writes Corey Rabaut.

At Sydney Domestic and Brisbane airports, QantasLink (QLink) Customer Service workers are being brought into the Qantas Airlines structure. For some, this will result in pay increases of up to 30 per cent.

It is a substantial outcome – long pursued by the Australian Services Union (ASU) – and one that brings workers onto standards more consistent with the broader Qantas operation.

But its importance extends beyond wages.

The move into Qantas Airlines will also deliver improvements in conditions that fall outside the scope of Same Job, Same Pay – including enterprise agreement protections, rostering arrangements, leave entitlements, and greater employment security. These are not directly guaranteed by the statutory framework, but are beneficial conditions for workers at Qantas Airlines.

The outcome reflects a simple but important point: when work is properly aligned with the enterprise it supports, both pay and conditions improve.

A structural correction that reflects reality

The QLink outcome is best understood as a structural correction. For years, these roles sat within a separate entity in the Qantas Group. That arrangement reflected internal organisational design – not a fundamental difference in the value of the work performed. In practice, aviation operates as a highly integrated system. Workers across different functions contribute to:

• The same passenger journeys, and
• The same commercial outcomes across the Qantas Group network.

While the roles were substantially similar, they were by design in different entities of the Qantas Group yet they remain part of a single enterprise reality.

The fact that bringing these roles into Qantas Airlines produces materially higher wages – and improved conditions – makes the point clear: the disparity was structural, not inherent to the work.

Same Job, Same Pay is working – within its framework

In its submission to the Closing the Loopholes review, the ASU supports the Same Job, Same Pay (SJSP) provisions under the Fair Work Act 2009.

Those provisions require an assessment of the true character of an arrangement – whether workers are, in substance, supplying labour into an enterprise, or whether a genuine service is being provided. Central to that inquiry is who derives the primary economic benefit of the work performed.

The ASU has applied these principles in the aviation sector, securing meaningful wage increases for workers performing comparable functions within Qantas-related operations.

This demonstrates that the framework is effective where it clearly applies.

It reflects an increasingly settled principle: where work is, in substance, part of an enterprise’s operations, lower standards should not be sustained through artificial distinctions in structure.

QLink: Where principle, application, and outcomes diverge

The QLink outcome sits comfortably within that principle but highlights the limits of its application and the broader consequences of how work is structured.

The statutory test does not turn on corporate form. Rather, something deeper, and in complex organisational settings, that distinction is not always clear.

QLink sits at the boundary of that analysis. On one view, its operations may be characterised as a separate service stream within the Qantas Group. On another, they reflect work that is functionally integrated into a broader enterprise, contributing to outcomes across the network.

The issue is not that the law cannot apply. It is that it does not yet ensure consistent outcomes. The significance of the QLink outcome is that it extends beyond pay parity alone. Same Job, Same Pay is directed to rates of pay. It does not, of itself, secure broader enterprise agreement conditions such as rostering protections, leave structures, or longer-term employment security and progression. Yet these are precisely the gains that flow when work is aligned with the primary enterprise.

This highlights a broader reality: how work is structured determines not only wages, but the full set of employment conditions that attach to it.

Changing incentives: the next phase of reform

The next phase of reform is not only about correcting underpayment after it occurs. It is about changing the incentives that shape how work is organised in the first place.

Under the current framework, outcomes can still turn on how arrangements are characterised – whether as labour supply or as a service. Where that distinction is contestable, there remains scope for structures that produce different standards for work that, in substance, supports the same enterprise.

The ASU’s proposals are directed at reducing that ambiguity by strengthening the connection between economic reality and legal outcome. In particular, the submission proposes:

1. A presumption that where the host is the primary beneficiary of the labour performed, the arrangement is presumed to be labour hire; and
2. A narrowed definition of an exempt “service contractor,” so that an employer only falls within that exclusion where:

• The tasks performed are genuinely specialised; and
• Those tasks are not performed by employees of the regulated host covered by the relevant enterprise agreement.
• These measures are designed to ensure that arrangements cannot be structured or characterised in a way that avoids enterprise standards where the underlying work is, in substance, part of the same operation.

In practical terms, this would move the system towards a position where, if work is integrated into an enterprise and contributes to its outcomes, comparable standards are more likely to follow regardless of how the arrangement is described. It would materially reduce the incentive to structure work in ways that produce lower standards where the underlying reality does not justify it.

The QLink outcome illustrates why this matters. Where work is aligned with the enterprise in substance:

• Wages increase,
• Conditions improve, and
• Disparities are reduced.

But under the current framework, that alignment is not yet inevitable in all cases.

The bottom line

The integration of QLink workers into Qantas Airlines is a significant and positive development. It will deliver substantial wage increases alongside broader improvements in conditions, which is contemplated in our current industrial relations framework. But its broader significance is this: it reflects the outcome the Fair Work Act is designed to achieve, without yet guaranteeing it in every case.

Same Job, Same Pay has demonstrated that structural undercutting can be addressed where the framework clearly applies. The QLink outcome shows that where results still depend on how work is characterised, equivalent disparities can persist until they are resolved through agreement or pressure.

The next phase of reform is therefore not about redefining the principle. It is about ensuring that, wherever work in substance forms part of the same enterprise, the outcome follows more consistently – without depending on how the arrangement is framed or contested.

Corey Rabaut is a lawyer and national industrial officer at the Australian Services Union.

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