Qantas is cutting 850 Sydney roles and handing the work to Accenture, mostly in India, while calling it AI — though the union says its own employee FAQ admits no AI systems arrive on day one. In the same news cycle, surveys show the AI sacking reversing: about one in five replaced US workers were asked back, half of them demanding a raise. I hold both, because the announcement that is a tragedy in Sydney is a delivery-centre win in Chennai, and India is beneficiary and accused at once.
Vanessa Hudson's all-staff email this week contained a line her predecessors might have envied: "The scale and speed of change in this space is unprecedented and unlike anything businesses have seen in generations." She was explaining 850 corporate roles — finance, procurement, people, marketing — going to Accenture, "delivered mostly by its teams in India and some in Australia", first changes by mid-2027 (The Guardian, 10 November 2026; ABC News, same day). Qantas shares rose more than 6 per cent.
The Australian Services Union read the same papers differently. Its NSW secretary Angus McFarland told PS News that Qantas wants people "to believe this is about artificial intelligence and the future of aviation. But there's really nothing innovative about shipping Australian jobs overseas to cut costs." The union points to Qantas's own employee FAQ, which it says confirms the work moves mainly to India and that no new AI systems or AI agents arrive on day one. Qantas denies it gave any such assurance.
In April, in AI Layoffs: A Silver Lining, I wrote that firms "may simply be rebranding conventional cost cuts as 'AI-driven'". Sydney is the illustration.
But the same news cycle carried the other half. Le Figaro (10 November 2026) reported SHL's June–July 2026 survey and Robert Half's findings; CMSWire reported Gartner's survey of 275 service leaders:
- SHL: 19.1 per cent of surveyed US employees said they were replaced by AI and later asked back; 24 per cent of 18–24s; 51 per cent wanted a raise first.
- Robert Half: 32 per cent of managers whose firms cut roles for AI had to recreate the same or similar functions.
- Gartner: 21 per cent cut agent headcount, 7 per cent have rehired, 11 per cent plan to within 18 months — after just 4 per cent got the AI return they expected.
Challenger counted 121,401 AI-attributed US cuts in January–October 2026, more than double 2025 — a reprieve, not a retreat.
Even so, my reading is simple and a little uncomfortable: AI did not take the jobs. It took the job titles, then handed the work back under a new label, on a new contract, at a higher rate.
Which leaves India in the strangest seat. The announcement emptying desks in Sydney fills them in a Chennai delivery centre; in June 2014, in Bravo, Kshama Sawant!, I wrote that "jobs have a tendency to migrate to places where these can be performed cheapest". Eleven years on, India is beneficiary and accused in the same sentence — uncomfortable, when the company exporting this work took $2.7 billion in taxpayer subsidies (ABC News, 11 November 2026).
What I would suggest is modest. Label honestly: if the driver is cost, not automation, say so. Publish a rehire register, so firms disclose how many AI-replaced roles came back and at what pay. Put redeployment before redundancy, along the lines of the Co-operative Capacity Centres I proposed in July 2025. None of it is quick; all of it is cheaper than buying the same expertise back at a premium.
With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
11 November 2026
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