Drunk on the company-booked flight to site: her sacking stood

Evelyn Josey had worked as a fly-in fly-out production technician at the Daunia mine in Queensland since March 2019, on $130,192 a year. The Commission accepted she had been a dedicated and loyal employee. She said that after a long relationship ended in 2021 she turned to alcohol to cope, and that by mid-2023 she had an alcohol problem and was struggling with her mental health.

On 18 July 2023 she arrived at Brisbane Airport for her flight to Moranbah, to start her roster. By her own account she was extremely intoxicated, and she kept drinking in the airline lounge. Two male co-workers later complained: one about unwanted touching in the lounge, the other about unwanted touching of a sexual nature on the flight the company had booked, when she sat next to him. He said he felt trapped in his seat, stayed still and hoped it would stop. Afterwards he worried about having to sit next to her on the way to work.

The next morning she told her supervisor she was not fit to work, took about five weeks of leave for treatment, and has been sober since. After an investigation, the company found the lounge conduct was harassment and the conduct on the flight was sexual harassment, and dismissed her on 21 December 2023.

She claimed unfair dismissal. She said she had been asleep on the plane, and that the lounge was outside work hours. Commissioner Durham preferred the consistent accounts of the other witnesses: her own memory was clouded by how much she had drunk. She would not have been at the airport at all but for her rostered shift. This was not strangers on a bus but “two co-workers undertaking work related travel”. Her intoxication “does not and cannot excuse it”.

The Commission found a valid reason, a fair process and no unfairness, and dismissed her claim. It also commended her efforts to get sober.