Qantas says it is concerned about the message sent by the Fair Work Commission after it ordered the airline to reinstate a male safety instructor who it fired for allegedly staring at a female colleague’s chest for 10 seconds.
The commission’s ruling related to an aviation safety training session run for six Qantas employees in January 2021, where the instructor demonstrated how to observe a person’s breathing patterns to determine whether they required medical attention.
The male safety instructor was said to have been explaining relevant first aid scenarios to the participants when he allegedly stopped in front of a female employee who was sitting about 1.5 metres away and stared into her eyes for about 10 seconds.
It was then alleged that he moved his gaze towards her chest, where his eyes remained focused for about 10-20 seconds. He is alleged to have remained silent.
The female complainant said: “It felt like a lifetime. This made me feel uncomfortable and it felt awkward. There was absolute silence in the class.”
She claimed that shortly after this, the instructor said “you may have noticed that I was deliberately staring at [the female employee’s] chest to see if she was breathing”. The instructor denied using those words.
The employee, who had been wearing a T-shirt with “some form of a scooped neckline”, then took her cardigan out and buttoned it up fully, before telling the instructor he had made her feel uncomfortable. She claimed he did not take her concern seriously.
However, fair work commissioner Donna McKenna sided with the sacked safety instructor, late last week rejecting the notion his actions constituted harassment or “any form of ogling or similar”.
The sacked safety instructor claimed that he only looked at the employee’s chest area for two to three seconds and commissioner McKenna agreed with his claim that his “principal point of visual focus” was on the exposed skin above the line of the T-shirt.
“I doubt it would have been possible to visually focus – as if with some type of laser-point precision – solely or exclusively on the upper chest area above the scooped neck of the complainant’s T-shirt line, without that focus also incidentally encompassing the complainant’s breast area or at least the upper parts of her breasts/breast area,” the commissioner said.
McKenna found in Thursday’s ruling that the instructor’s “estimate is more reliable than the complainant’s estimate concerning length of time concerning the chest staring/looking”.
The safety instructor was ultimately dismissed in August however McKenna ordered he be reinstated and back paid.
McKenna noted the interaction at the centre of the allegations was “brief”, “physically well-distanced” and “first aid-specific”. “The applicant did not, for example, physically demonstrate the Heimlich manoeuvre on a class participant without first asking for a volunteer or seeking permission,” she said.
She found Qantas’s submission that the safety instructor had a “lack of insight and contrition” and had a “disciplinary history” was not relevant.
McKenna accepted the sacked safety instructor’s submission that not “every moment of offence caused generates a valid reason for dismissal”.
Qantas plans to appeal the decision, a spokesperson for the airline said on Monday.
“We’re very disappointed and concerned about the message this judgment sends. Everyone has the right to feel safe and respected when they come to work.”
