It is time for Qantas to come clean on how many jobs in the Qantas group will be offshored, a union said today after the Flying Kangaroo has announced a profit for the 18th consecutive year since its merger with Australian Airlines.

Qantas Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce on Wednesday announced a profit of $552 million for the financial year ending 30 June 2011.

“This result reflects the strength of the Qantas Group’s portfolio and is our best performance since the global financial crisis” Mr Joyce said.

Today’s announcement by Qantas makes it one of the most profitable airlines in the world and yet the company is about to embark upon a strategy of offshoring and outsourcing jobs to new offshoots based outside Australia, according to the Australian Services Union (ASU).

Currently Qantas says that 92 per cent of the staff are Australian-based, but ASU Assistant Secretary Linda White believes this will change after the next announcement.

“What percentage of the jobs in the Qantas Group will be in Australia – is it 80 per cent , 60 per cent or 50 per cent - they are not saying and it is time the company did,” Ms White said.

Over recent years the Qantas group has offshored jobs in IT, load control, call centres, operations, administration and a range of other areas and this has seen the number of Australian based staff decrease.