Being bullied at work? Know what the law can do.

Paula Taylor worked part time as finance, administration and human resources manager for Hoad Water Cartage, a family company carting water around South Australia from a property in the Adelaide Hills. She was a 15-year friend of co-owner Charmaine Hoad. When Mrs Hoad and her husband, managing director Mark Hoad, separated in late 2017, Mrs Taylor found herself in the crossfire.

Mr Hoad’s emails turned rude and autocratic (“stop wasting my time with trivial crap”), and he described her as part of a “girls club” and as his wife’s “sidekick”. He pressed her about his marriage after she asked him to stop, demanded lists of her daily tasks, and on one day sent her about 50 emails asking her to process his expenses while she was on light duties. An interim court order in the couple’s family law case restrained him, with narrow exceptions, from directing her work. When she relied on it, his lawyers sent her a formal warning. A second warning followed her refusal to prepare a warning letter against his estranged wife.

Deputy President Anderson found the bullying “serious and conducted over a prolonged period”. Mrs Taylor had become “collateral damage in the matrimonial dispute”. The warnings went out on lawyers’ letterhead because Mr Hoad “wanted to intimidate Mrs Taylor to the greatest degree possible”. By then she was under her doctors’ care and on a WorkCover claim.

With the two owners unable to speak for the business with one voice, the Commission set out detailed orders itself. The warning letters were ordered withdrawn. Only Mrs Hoad could discipline or dismiss her, and she would report to Mrs Hoad. Mr Hoad could contact her only by email, professionally, not about the marriage and not through his solicitors.

No one appealed. On 4 February 2020, on an application by Mrs Hoad, the Commission found that Mr Hoad had bullied Mrs Taylor again since the orders were made, and varied them: he could no longer alter her role, duties or job security without Mrs Hoad’s or Mrs Taylor’s agreement, had to tell Mrs Hoad of any contact about her WorkCover claim, and could not call her a “book-keeper”. See Paula Taylor [2020] FWC 540.

Joseph Salama was a transport officer with Sydney Trains from 28 August 2013, and a union delegate and health and safety representative. In May 2017 he applied for a stop-bullying order naming four managers. He alleged they had harassed and bullied him, including by threatening disciplinary action over what they said were false allegations he had made.

On 14 August 2017 Sydney Trains dismissed him. The Commission noted that the dismissal related, among other things, to the employer’s finding that he had made false bullying allegations against those managers. Mr Salama went to the Federal Court with a separate general protections claim, alleging he had been dismissed because he made the bullying application.

Nine days after the dismissal, the respondents’ lawyers wrote to his lawyer. With his job gone, they said, there could be no continuing risk of bullying at work, so the Commission had no power to make an order; if he did not withdraw, they would rely on the letter to seek their costs. There was no reply. Instead he asked the Commission to put the bullying case on hold until the Federal Court case was decided. In April 2018 the Commission refused, and dismissed his application as having no reasonable prospects of success.

In the Commission each side usually pays its own costs. But Deputy President Sams found that an earlier decision was “on all fours” with Mr Salama’s case, so it “should have been reasonably apparent to him, and his legal advisors” that keeping the application alive could not succeed. He ordered Mr Salama to pay the respondents’ costs from 19 December 2017 on the ordinary party–party basis, refusing the higher indemnity costs they asked for. The Commission never made a finding on whether Mr Salama had been bullied.

Tao (Selina) Qu was the supervisor of Monards’ luxury watch and jewellery store in Surfers Paradise, a small shop with a handful of staff. Around March 2020 a new team leader, Tak Wing Wong, arrived from a competitor, Hourglass. Ms Qu said that within months he was suggesting she go and work there instead.

Commissioner Hunt went through the incidents one by one, and not all of them were bullying. Moving the timesheets and hiring to Mr Wong was a reasonable business decision, and asking Ms Qu to wrap watches was a reasonable direction. On the day Ms Qu fainted at work, the Commissioner watched the store footage and found Mr Wong had not acted unreasonably, apart from some condescending cleaning instructions. She also found Ms Qu had once screamed at him, and told her not to do it again.

But much else was proved. He did repeatedly suggest she could work for the competitor. Standing next to her while serving a client, he sent her a Slack message asking her to bring the client a bottle of water: “unsuitable, unreasonable and unfathomable”. He posted a photo of an untidy counter to a group chat that senior management could see, told her she was getting a warning, withdrew it, and then gave her another for closing a cabinet too loudly: “a calculated act to intimidate”. He put her on a performance improvement plan that “was not warranted”. And two days running he ignored her “Good morning”, the second time replying only “I heard it”. When the company’s director then told the team that greetings were optional, the Commissioner called it “a complete failure to meet her duty of care”.

Monards had no bullying policy, and staff complaints about Mr Wong had gone nowhere. Finding a risk the bullying would continue, the Commission made an order to stop Mr Wong bullying Ms Qu.

Lindsay Rosenblum was the full-time accounting manager for QLD Trade Services Builders, a labour hire and building services company in Airlie Beach. In June 2023 she applied for a stop-bullying order naming director Bryan Roberts and his wife, Julie Roberts, an accountant who had recently become a part-time employee of the company. Ms Rosenblum had been off work unwell since mid-April 2023, largely on unpaid leave, with a workers compensation claim pending. The company said its actions were reasonable management action.

On 5 July 2023, while the Commission was arranging a conference, Mrs Roberts wrote to Ms Rosenblum directly, although she knew Ms Rosenblum had a lawyer. The letter set out 12 allegations of serious misconduct and required her to attend a disciplinary meeting by Zoom at 3.30pm the next day, warning that a decision could be made without her if she did not attend “for whatever reason”. Her psychologist wrote that such a meeting would have a significant negative impact on her recovery.

Commissioner Hunt heard the matter the next morning. She found that Mrs Roberts’ earlier email to the Commission, which put the word “sick” in inverted commas, was “an extraordinarily rude attack on Ms Rosenblum’s integrity”, and that the letter was not reasonable management action. Mrs Roberts came across in the hearing as aggressive, and gave no undertaking about how she would act in future. On that material the Commissioner was satisfied that Mrs Roberts had repeatedly behaved unreasonably and might keep doing so.

She made an interim order stopping the respondents from finalising the investigation or taking further disciplinary action until the bullying application was decided, and from contacting Ms Rosenblum directly. The Commissioner was careful to say she had formed no view about the earlier incidents or about Mr Roberts. The misconduct allegations against Ms Rosenblum were not tested.

This was an interim decision only. No later published decision on Ms Rosenblum’s application was found.