It comes after the court ruled largely in favour of the union, and claimed that Qantas’ decision to outsource its ground services workers in 2020 was done so in partial violation of the Fair Work Act.

It also comes as the judge presiding over the case, Justice Michael Lee, said last week he sees it as largely “unworkable” to expect those roles could be reinstated, and hinted the appeals process could drag on for years.

Despite this, Mr Bornstein said that in the past, similar cases had resulted in workers being reinstated to the company.

“Under the legislation that we’re dealing with, the court has very broad powers to remedy breaches, so we will be asking the court to use those broad powers to encourage Qantas to maximise reinstatement for the employees,” he explained.

Qantas has previously stated in court that reinstatement would be nearly impossible as it has already gotten rid of its Qantas Ground Services unit, however, Mr Bornstein said the process “doesn’t need to be all that complicated”.

“We know that Qantas is opposed to reinstatement, which might make it less straightforward than it otherwise would be if the airline was co-operating with the union over reinstatement,” he added, however he remained confident that the union could successfully persuade the court to make Qantas bring the affected workers back on.

While he agreed that Qantas did have the power to drag out the process by remaining uncompromising on reinstatement, he said that given the number of people involved, the court could push to “fast track” the case.

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“If Qantas was co-operative, this whole thing could be over quite quickly, however, if they want to drag it out, the court might consider the amount of people involved,” he said.

Mr Bornstein noted that despite stating multiple times that it would appeal the court’s decision, Qantas is yet to submit its appeal.

“They haven’t yet, though they’ve certainly made a lot of noise about pursuing appeals,” he said.

“We were expecting them to pursue their appeal rights if we did win, so it hasn’t shocked us, but they are yet to submit that appeal.”

The TWU and Qantas will return to court on 18 August, where the union will ask the court for permission to gather evidence on exactly how many workers wish to be reinstated to the airline.

Last year, the union hired Mr Bornstein, who helped win the infamous Waterfront dispute, to challenge Qantas’ proposal to outsource ground-handling operations.

Mr Bornstein has long said that winning the TWU outsourcing case against Qantas is a legal first.

“This case is significant because it’s the first time a court has found in favour of a claim under that particular part of the Fair Work Act,” Mr Bornstein explained.

“The court found that one of the reasons that Qantas sacked those employees was in order to prevent those employees from being able to bargain for further agreement and take protected action as a part of the collective bargaining process.

“So, it’s the first time that I’m aware of that this particular part of the Act which protects the rights of employees to take future protective action has been found to have been breached by an employer.

“It’s also the first major outsourcing in about 20 years to have been found to breach the Fair Work Act.”

This story originally appeared on Australian Aviation.