Qantas staffer sacked for slurs

A QANTAS baggage handler was rightly sacked for, among other things, telling a colleague to “f*ck off back to your own country” for being “unAustralian” and not taking sick days.

Fair Work Commissioner Michelle Bissett found Qantas had a valid reason to dismiss Darwin baggage handler Benjamin Gigney, whose conduct was labelled “serious”, “abusive” and “threatening”.

Mr Gigney’s unfair dismissal claim failed almost in its entirety, other than a finding that the airline had not proven he put his former co-worker, Agostinho Alves, in a headlock, an act which Mr Gigney said under oath would have been a “chump move”.

A February hearing of the Fair Work Commission was told Mr Gigney often greeted Mr Alves with the phrase: “Here comes f*cking Ago.”

Mr Gigney’s problems began when he grabbed Mr Alves by the shirt at the start of a shift in May last year and said “you think you are so much better than anyone else” after Mr Alves responded to his morning greeting with only a thumbs up.

Mr Gigney then shoved Mr Alves against a locker, which Mr Alves described as being “thrown like a bag of potatoes”.

The incident left Mr Alves with a torn shirt and a pair of broken sunglasses, and prompted him to come forward to Qantas bosses.

An investigation also found Mr Gigney, during a routine chat in the lunch room about taking sick days, said words to the effect of: “It’s un-Australian if you don’t take sick days. If you don’t like it you can f*ck off back to your own country.”

Ms Bissett accepted the evidence of a senior local Qantas staffer that Mr Gigney’s comments were directed at Mr Alves, who is Portuguese.

“Mr Gigney’s conduct in this respect was highly disrespectful, incredibly offensive, insensitive and discriminatory,” Ms Bissett said.

Ms Bissett also found Mr Gigney had, in an earlier incident, pushed a break-room table in frustration at another co-worker.

The table hit Mr Alves in the stomach.

Mr Gigney, who worked for Qantas for more than a decade, said there was a culture of name-calling and making jokes at the expense of others, which Ms Bissett largely rejected.

“This was not a case of two friends horsing around or a bit of argy-bargy, or a friendly test of strength,” Ms Bissett said.

Ms Bissett said Mr Gigney had shown “little remorse or contrition” and that his dismissal was “not harsh, nor was it unjust or unreasonable”.