Passenger sacked after truck crash. Unfair?

Early one morning, two men were in a truck driving to a depot.

There were two ways to the depot. A long way and a short-cut down a laneway.

Both men knew that they shouldn’t take the laneway … but they went that way anyway.

The truck ran over a bollard in the laneway and broke down.

The obvious question was: why did the men take the short-cut when they both knew they shouldn’t go that way?

The company's management decided to take their own short-cut in answering that question.

Despite each man insisting that taking the short-cut was the other’s idea, management quickly reached the conclusion that the passenger was primarily to blame.

This seems to have been because the driver had an unblemished record but the passenger had previously been warned about driving a ute through the short-cut.  In the words of one manager, it was just a matter of “putting two and two together”.

The passenger was sacked within a few days of the incident. The driver received a warning.

The Fair Work Commission found that the passenger's dismissal was unfair.

The Commission stated –

“Had a proper investigation dispassionately established that [the passenger] had likely directed [the driver] to turn into the … laneway, the warning could be taken into account as tipping the balance in favour of dismissal; however, that is not what occurred. Instead the investigation assumed [the passenger’s] conduct, rather than establishing it."

The Commission was also critical of the fact that the two employees were treated differently in circumstances where, “[o]n balance, [the driver’s] conduct seems to have been more culpable that the [passenger’s]”.

The case is another example of the need for employers to conduct a procedurally fair investigation before making a misconduct finding against an employee. And it’s also another example that short-cuts often end up being the longest distance between two points.

You can read the full decision here – Bryce v IKON Administration Pty Ltd.