Qantas said on Wednesday it would pay Alan Joyce, its former CEO who retired earlier this month, a remuneration of A$21.4m ($13.8m) for fiscal 2023, a near 10-fold jump from last year. However, Joyce's pay could be subject to adjustments and clawback as the Australian flagship carrier Qantas faces regulatory challenges over allegations of illegal ticket sales, which has also damaged its reputation. Joyce, Qantas' top boss for 15 years, brought forward his retirement by two months to earlier this month. The airline, which controls a near 60% market share as of April, added in a statement that it was slashing its short-term incentives for senior executives for fiscal 2023 by 20% "in recognition of the customer and brand impact of cumulative events." The Australian competition regulator late last month accused Qantas of selling tickets to more than 8,000 flights between May and July 2022 without disclosing they had been cancelled, triggering a public firestorm.<br/>
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A federal court judge has ordered the new Qantas CE, Vanessa Hudson, to attend mediation proceedings with a union chief to settle compensation and penalty claims, with the bill for illegally outsourcing 1,700 workers potentially running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. On Wednesday, legal representatives for Qantas and the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) told the federal court they were open to a mediation process to settle the final compensation stemming from their long-running legal battle. The airline ultimately lost the case last week when the high court unanimously upheld a full federal court decision for laying off staff at 10 airports in November 2020. In July 2021 the federal court ruled Qantas’s outsourcing of the workers was in part driven by a desire to avoid industrial action, which is a breach of the Fair Work Act. It is understood that compensation and penalties could enter the hundreds of millions. On Wednesday, Justice Michael Lee said he was hopeful the parties – who have maintained a combative relationship during the tenure of former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce – could now “resolve their differences” at mediation. Lee said he wanted Hudson and the TWU national secretary, Michael Kaine, to attend mediation proceedings with lawyers. Lee was open to the union’s request for two affected former employees to also be present at the hearings. “I have a very strong view about the need for people to be invested in this process at the highest levels … [for] persons with authority to settle the claim of statutory compensation on behalf of all parties, including the secretary of the applicant (Kaine) and the CEO of the first respondent, Ms Hudson,” Lee said. Richard Dalton KC, representing Qantas, said the orders “should not specifically require the attendance” of Hudson. He asked if Andrew Finch, Qantas group’s general counsel and company secretary, could attend instead. Lee responded: “I don’t want it to be attended to by a lawyer. I want the chief executive officer to be present together with the person leading the union to be there.”<br/>