Patrick told to reinstate senior tally clerk summarily dismissed after mealroom fight.
A senior tally clerk has been reinstated to Patrick Stevedoring after the Fair Work Commission (FWC) ruled in favour of her unfair dismissal claim.
Susan Francis was dismissed on January 13, following an incident during a night shift on November 23 last year.
She was accused of using abusive and offensive language over a two-way radio and assaulting a colleague by way of grabbing him around the throat during an argument about what was said.
Francis denied both allegations claimed her accuser punched her in the throat.
FWC deputy president Peter Sams says what followed was an internal Patrick investigation marred by “serious and fundamental flaws” in its conclusions and recommendations.
He says that while several people were in the relatively small mealroom when the incident took place, only one corroborated the accusation against Francis. That the witness statement was made a day after his initial interview “seems very odd indeed,” Sams says.
The investigation was hampered by an undeclared “code of silence” among the workforce, in which workers were discouraged from cooperating with the company.
However, even with this noted, Sams says Patrick’s response to the complaint had been unfair and ill-advised.
In particular, he says regional HR manager Tamara Green was biased in her investigation and lacked the experience to conduct it properly.
Senior managers at Patrick did little to supervise her efforts or present alternative options to the dismissal.
“The evidentiary case in this proceeding was so hopelessly compromised that there can be only one inevitable answer to the question of whether there was a valid reason for the applicant’s dismissal. That answer must be in the negative,” Sams says.
He ordered the company to reinstate Francis before November 18 and to pay her the remuneration she would have expected had she continued in her work (less any income earned from a new job that she began in June).