Breaking: Bain Capital confirmed as new owner of Virgin Australia

The Second Creditors Meeting was held this morning and creditors overwhelmingly voted to endorse the sale of Virgin Australia to new owner Bain Capital.

This is a significant milestone for USU/ASU members at Virgin as it means the company will continue to exist and continue to fly as we emerge from the COVID19 pandemic.

However this process has resulted in the devastating loss of jobs and most employees remain stood down without work – we will continue our work to preserve as many jobs as possible, and maintaining your hard-fought-for working conditions.

Now is the time to work together to hold Bain to its promises to the workforce – starting with its commitment to maintaining the unique culture among the workforce by treating you fairly and not driving your working conditions down in a race to the bottom.

EOIs close Monday

As you are aware Virgin Australia made some changes to the time frame for EOIs, as follows: 

• Guest Services employees are able to submit EOI until 5pm on Monday 7 September 2020.
• VA will seek to formally offer Voluntary Redundancies to employees either on Tuesday 8 or Wednesday 9 September 2020.
• Employees will have until 5pm on Monday 14 September 2020 to formally accept a VR offer.
• Employees who submit an EOI/accept an offer for a Voluntary Redundancy ending on 3 April 2021 will be able to change their termination date to 3 October 2020 if their JobKeeper eligibility changes – i.e. if they are no longer entitled to JobKeeper payments, or will only be entitled to the $750/$650 part time JobKeeper payment. The selection to change termination date must be made by 5pm on Wednesday 16 September 2020.
• If an employee changes their termination date, every effort will be made to process their termination payment by 10 October 2020 (and ideally on 7 October), however the change may lead to a delay in the processing of the termination payment so that it is paid no later than 17 October 2020.

Errors in redundancy estimates

Earlier this week we raised a concern that redundancy estimates for some employees were incorrect. HR have confirmed there is an error by 1-2 weeks pay for a cohort of employees as they did not correctly apply the agreement. New estimates will be provided to employees if VA makes an offer to an employee for a voluntary redundancy.  

We can tell you that the amount of weeks redundancy/severance pay (not including notice pay) your estimate should include depending on your years of service is as follows:

Need more information?

Speak to your organiser for more information: