Qantas should be forced to pay the maximum penalty of $121 million for illegally outsourcing the roles of 1800 ground workers, to send a strong message to all companies, a union says. 

Justice Michael Lee is set to decide the penalty Qantas must pay after three days of hearings that began today in the Federal Court in Sydney.

Outside court, Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine said the hearing was the beginning of the end of “a protracted, brutal, distressing set of litigation” that started in 2020 after Qantas sacked the workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Qantas appealed the case all the way to the High Court, which unanimously upheld the Federal Court’s finding it had breached the Fair Work Act by outsourcing the workers, preventing them from accessing industrial rights to collectively bargain and take protected industrial action.

“We have to send a very strong, clear signal to Qantas and every other company in Australia that this can never, ever happen again to any Australian worker,” Kaine said.

In court, Qantas chief people officer Catherine Walsh told Justice Lee that “hopefully you’ll see from the size of the compensation payment that, in fact, we are very sorry”.

“We do wish for the workforce that was impacted to be properly remediated and the compensation that has been agreed could go some way to deal with that,” she said.

The compensation payments will start flowing to workers by the end of May, with a base payment of $10,000 for all workers.

Outside court, Kaine said Qantas had “said sorry at two minutes to midnight”.

“They put it in an affidavit in these proceedings, because if you show contrition in penalty proceedings, the judge is bound to consider whether that should provide you with a discount on your penalty,” he said.

But he said the penalty should reflect the “human suffering, the family dislocation, the financial stress, the mental anguish, the family breakdowns” directly resulting from Qantas’ illegal conduct.

Also outside court, former Qantas worker Tony Hayes said the saga was “never ending”.

“It’s been the same conversation for five years and we just want it to go away, but we want them to pay,” he said.

Another former worker Anne Guirguis said she was with the company for 28 years and thought she would retire there.

“I’ve got colleagues that have lost houses and have been divorced, it’s changed their world,” she said.

This afternoon, Justice Lee is expected to start hearing closing submissions from lawyers for Qantas and the TWU.