MELBOURNE -- A judge on Monday fined Qantas Airways 90 million Australian dollars ($59 million) for illegally firing more than 1,800 ground staff at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.The penalty is in addition to the AU$120 million ($78 million) in compensation that Australia’s biggest airline had already agreed to pay its former employees.Australian Federal Court Justice Michael Lee said the outsourcing of 1,820 baggage handler and cleaner jobs at Australian airports in late 2020 was the “largest and most significant contravention” of relevant Australian labor laws in their 120-year history.Qantas agreed in December last year to pay AU$120 million ($78 million) in compensation to former staff after seven High Court judges unanimously rejected the Sydney-based airline’s appeal against the judgment that outsourcing their jobs was illegal.The Transport Workers Union, which took the airline to court, had argued the airline should receive the largest fine available — AU$121,212,000 ($78,969,735).Lee ruled that the minimum fine to create a deterrence should be AU$90 million ($59 million), noting that Qantas executives had expected to save AU$125 million ($81 million) a year through outsourcing the jobs.Lee questioned the sincerity of Qantas’s apology for its illegal conduct, noting that the airline later unsuccessfully argued that it owed no compensation to its former staff.“If any further evidence was needed of the unrelenting and aggressive litigation strategy adopted in this case by Qantas, it is provided by this effort directed to denying any compensation whatsoever to those in respect of whom Qantas was publicly professing regret for their misfortune,” Lee said."I do think that the people in charge of Qantas now have some genuine regret, but this more likely reflects the damage that this case has done to the company rather than remorse for the damage done to the affected workers,” Lee added.Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson, who was the airli...