Unfair dismissal hearing details shocking workplace behaviour at Boom Logistics' Queensland sites
By Sean Muir | October 30, 2012
A fart in a workmate’s face, urination in workers’ boots, and a head-butting incident at a staff Christmas party have been described in an unfair dismissal case involving Boom Logistics.
Details of a “toxic work environment” at two Queensland crane logistics sites were revealed after a Boom Logistics employee, who allegedly threw a workmate into a truck tray, successfully argued to Fair Work Australia (FWA) he had been unfairly dismissed.
Boom Logistics dismissed crane operator Zeb Dewson in May for allegedly throwing workmate Chris Zuniga into a water-filled dump truck tray and telling him: “You’re going for a swim”.
FWA Commissioner Ian Cambridge says the decision to dismiss Dewson also took into account he had allegedly head-butted another colleague at a Christmas party 17 months earlier.
But despite the allegations, Cambridge has upheld Dewson’s application for unfair dismissal on the grounds that no reliable findings supporting the assaults could be found at Boom Logistics.
“The procedure that the employer adopted to deal with disciplinary issues arising from the allegations of serious misconduct made against the applicant was, regrettably, inept,” Cambridge says.
“The deficiencies in that procedure made erroneous findings an almost inevitable outcome.”
Cambridge ruled against reinstating Dewson but has allowed him to seek compensation.
Cambridge says Boom’s workplace resembled “a school playground where the teachers were wilfully blind to all manner of misbehaviour ranging from horseplay to wanton gangster thuggery”.
As part of the allegation involving the dump truck, Cambridge says Zuniga also alleged another employee approached him while he was seated “and then turned around and pulled his bum cheeks apart and farted in his face”.
Other workplace behaviour described during the FWA hearing included the slashing of car tyres and and widespread drug use.
Boom Logistics provides crane logistics and lifting solutions and employs more than 1,100 people.
