‘All too common’: win for senior public servant as BoM ditches its appeal in unfair dismissal case
The Bureau of Meteorology has withdrawn its appeal against the unfair dismissal case from a senior public servant who was sacked for taking two days of approved personal leave in Paris before attending a conference.
The legal stoush between the BoM and Jasmine Chambers has been going on for more than five years, with the commonwealth agency dropping its appeal late last month, meaning the findings for February’s judgment stand.
Chambers alleged she was sacked in a “sham redundancy” by the BoM in 2019, after a disagreement with management over her taking personal leave while on a work trip to Paris, where she had also flown business class.
Afterwards, she was told she had not passed her probation period, which she successfully fought against, before being told she was being made redundant in a restructure.
The federal circuit and family court of Australia found the bureau contravened the Fair Work Act in four ways when it drove Chambers, who had served as a general manager of the agency’s global and national science relationships, out of the organisation in 2020.
In a statement, Chambers said she was “pleased that we have reached a conclusion”.
“Cases like mine are all too common,” she said. “We hope this decision serves to encourage and enable employers to be more considered and conscientious about workplace decisions that significantly impact people’s livelihoods and careers, and that appropriate governance is in place for our important public institutions like the Bureau of Meteorology.”
In February, the federal circuit court judge Douglas Humphreys found that Chambers had done nothing wrong and senior staff had worked to thwart her redeployment inside the organisation.
“The decision reflected a desire to manage the applicant out of the bureau,” Humphreys said. “It was taken because she was a difficult senior employee who had actively and successfully exercised her workplace rights.”
The court also heard Chambers was hired on an executive level 2 band, which meant she should have been paid $130,000 to $140,000 but her hiring manager boosted her packages to more than $218,000.
Humphreys called the move a “work around” by the bureau, and said there was a system of the organisation concealing the number of highly paid employees it had on staff.
In a statement, a spokesperson for BoM, said the government stood by its opinion the judgment was flawed.
“The claim brought by Ms Chambers in the Federal Circuit Court and Family Court of Australia, and the Bureau’s appeal to the Federal Court of Australia, have been settled by agreement between the parties,” the spokesperson said.
“The judgment was not upheld. The Commonwealth considered there were fundamental errors and flaws in the judgment, and sought leave to appeal the judgment on grounds that the judgment was affected by ostensible bias, denial of procedural fairness and general errors.
“Notwithstanding this, the parties agreed to settle the matter, consistent with the Bureau’s obligations as a model litigant to conduct litigation in accordance with legal practice and principle, including settling claims where possible and appropriate.”
