The bullying was clear. Then the bully quit, so no order could be made

Feyzullah Kaya worked at Team Global Express’s Webb Dock depot in Melbourne, which moves freight to and from Tasmania. In February 2022 he complained that a co-worker, Christopher Catania, was abusing him: name-calling, swearing, and unwanted physical contact. The company’s own investigation upheld his complaints. Mr Catania was given a written warning and the two men were put on opposite sides of the depot.

It did not stop the bullying. On 10 June 2022 Mr Kaya left work after, he said, Mr Catania called him a “Dog”, and days later he applied for a stop-bullying order. When he briefly returned in May 2023, a second investigation found that Mr Catania had bullied him further in 2022, and the company began considering dismissing him for serious misconduct. Mr Catania resigned before it finished. Soon afterwards he sent Mr Kaya an abusive Facebook message.

Commissioner Lee found that Mr Catania’s conduct “most certainly” amounted to bullying: repeated physical aggression and verbal abuse. The Commissioner also found that Mr Kaya had “been let down by his employer”, and that his supervisor had encouraged him not to report it.

But the law gave him no power to act. A stop-bullying order exists to prevent future bullying, not to punish the past, and the man responsible had gone. The Commissioner was not satisfied that the two other men Mr Kaya complained about had bullied him, and they were being kept apart from him: one would work about 150 metres away and start two hours earlier, the supervisor would no longer manage him, and both would use separate lunchrooms and bathrooms. With no remaining risk, there was no jurisdiction to make an order, and the application was dismissed. The Commissioner stressed that this “is not a failure of the Applicant”, and encouraged him to return to work once his doctors cleared him.