Big blue over supermarket emploployee dyeing hair

A supermarket worker who was sacked after dyeing her hair blue and refusing to wear a hat has been awarded $7000 in compensation for hurt and humiliation.

The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) found The Shawz Group 2019 Ltd, owner of Stokes Valley New World, unfairly dismissed Annelisa Lummis in 2020.

Lummis was 18 when she began working at the supermarket in 2018, at which time she signed an individual employment agreement and a set of ‘‘house rules’’. The business was sold in 2019 to The Shawz Group, owned by the previous manager of the store, Dan Shaw.

Existing staff, including Lummis, signed new employment agreements on November 11, 2019, but the house rules were not replaced and continued to apply. Around November 20, 2020, Lummis dyed her hair partially blue. She said she did not think much of it, because other staff also had dyed hair.

During her shift on November 20, Lummis was asked by Shaw to wear a company baseball cap for the rest of her shift. Lummis agreed, telling the authority she felt unable to challenge Shaw in a public area of the store. Returning for her next shift two days later, she forgot her cap. When the missing hat was queried by the store’s grocery manager, Lummis said the house rules did not require her to wear one.

After a series of phone, text and formal meetings, Shaw wrote to Lummis stating the outcome of a disciplinary investigation was to dismiss her for serious misconduct.

However, authority member Claire English wrote in her determination that The Shawz Group had not established that the uniform policy in question existed or that it applied to Lummis.

‘‘Summary dismissal without notice and without paying out the week, was an action out of all proportion to the seriousness of what had occurred,’’ English wrote.

The Shawz Group was ordered to pay Lummis $2786 in outstanding wages, holiday pay and lost earnings, as well as $7000 compensation for hurt and humiliation.