Dismissals of Two Miners Overturned by Fair Work Commission

 

The Fair Work Commission has ordered the mining giant BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance to reinstate two employees who had been dismissed for carrying their mobile devices onto the mine site where they worked.
The two workers, one of whom had been employed at the Queensland mine site for 15 years, had their contracts terminated for breaching the rule that prohibits employees from carrying their mobile devices onto their work site.

 

BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance may now be forced to review one of its new safety policies at one of its Queensland mines after the order from the Fair Work Commission. On 22 December 2014, the Commission found that while there were valid grounds to dismiss both men, procedural deficiencies with the mine’s mobile policy and its implementation rendered the terminations unfair, and ordered the two men be reinstated.

 

The Commission held that the policy, which was implemented in November 2013, was “not clearly written or implemented as zero-tolerance policy” and that the employees had not been adequately trained in the operation of the new policy.

 

The Commission also found the mine’s disciplinary process to be inadequate, deeming management to have failed to provide both employees with an appropriate opportunity to respond to the reasons for their termination.

 

Adapted from an article in The Age, 29 December 2014. Original found here.

 

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