Shocking new details have been revealed of a FIFO worker’s flight of shame, after she was sacked for drunkenly sexually harassing two male colleagues at a Qantas lounge and later on board a plane.
Evelyn Josey lost her $130,000-a-year mining job after she loaded up on free alcohol at Brisbane Airport’s Qantas lounge on her way to BHP’s Duania mine site, west of Mackay on Queensland’s Coral Sea coast, on July 18 last year.
Ms Josey had recently split with her partner and was heavily intoxicated when she began rubbing her buttocks against a workmate she barely knew, a Fair Work Commission decision said.
Ms Josey – who had been working for BHP’s in-house labour provider OS MCAP – was asked by her workmate: ‘What are you doing?’. She replied ‘just good to see you’, the tribunal heard.
While sitting together at a table moments later, the witness later claimed to workplace investigators that the brunette had then tried to grab at his private parts – although the allegation could not be substantiated.
Ms Josey was still allowed to board her flight to Moranbah Airport, near Duania, and sat next to another workmate.
Evelyn Josey was heavily intoxicated at a Qantas lounge before boarding a flight for work last July. The incidents from that afternoon cost her job
Ms Josey then tried to hold his hands and snuggle with him, before she then placed her head near his lap.
The uncomfortable father-of-two pretended to be asleep in the hope she would leave him alone.
Ms Josey was sacked just before Christmas last year over the serious misconduct. She took the matter to the Commission but her claim for unfair dismissal was thrown out earlier this month.
She has since gone into hiding, locking her social media accounts and changing her name.
Ms Josey admitted to the tribunal that she does not remember much of what happened that day but said she suffered racism, misogyny and sexual harassment.
She had sought six months salary in compensation and demanded to be reinstated in her old job.
However commissioner Sharon Durham found her termination was not harsh or unreasonable and Josey had sexually harassed her colleagues.
A FIFO worker earning $130,000 a year has been sacked after she drunkenly sexually harassed two male colleagues inside a Qantas airport lounge and on a flight (stock image)
Some of her colleagues described Ms Josey’s behaviour as ‘out of character and quite erratic’ as she ordered two bourbon and cokes at the bar in the Qantas lounge.
‘I was just having a little bit of a harder time on that particular day and I didn’t particularly want to go to work and I started drinking really early,’ she told the tribunal.
She conceded she’d turned to alcohol in December 2021 when the relationship with her partner of 26 years broke down.
She said she had developed a drinking problem and was also suffering mental health issues.
Following the drunken encounters with her co-workers, Ms Josey told her shift manager she was not fit to work the following day and instead took five weeks of leave.
Commissioner Durham accepted she has been sober since the incidents.
Ms Josey also claimed she apologised to the colleague she slept on during the flight and asked him to forgive her.
However, both men said they were concerned about Ms Josey’s behaviour, with one nervous to fly again with her, and the other worried she knew where he lived because she’d dropped him home on one occasion.
She claimed that she skolled a drink at the Qantas lounge and when she went to put the glass down on the table, she missed and it spilled ice onto the floor.
Ms Josey was found to have sexually harassed her colleagues by rubbing her body against one of them in the Brisbane Airport Qantas Lounge (pictured)
She alleged her colleagues then laughed at her and she moved to another table.
Ms Josey also claimed if the incident had happened the way it was alleged to, it was outside of work hours with a friend.
The FIFO worker insisted the episode on the plane happened while she was asleep ‘and as such, would not have had the ability to have made any conscious decisions so as to constitute sexual harassment’, the FWC heard.
Her male colleague said he pretended to be asleep and ‘played dead’, but the unwanted touching continued for the whole 90-minute flight.
He said he was worried Ms Josey may have caused a scene if he asked her to stop given she appeared intoxicated and erratic.
‘When the air hostesses walked past, he gave them a look as if to say ”I don’t want to be here”, the commission heard.
Commissioner Durham said while Ms Josey’s level of drunkenness may have had an impact, it ‘does not and cannot excuse’ her behaviour.
The commissioner praised Ms Josey for her efforts to get herself sober in the wake of the incident.
But he also gave regard to her recollection of the events of that day being ‘clouded by her extreme intoxication’.
Her application for unfair dismissal was rejected.
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