The Employment Relations Authority has ordered the reinstatement of a bus driver to his position and awarded him $2000 in compensation because his employer did not follow the correct process in his dismissal.
At a disciplinary meeting on June 9, 2014 Go Wellington dismissed bus driver Randall Davies for serious misconduct after an elderly passenger had her arm trapped by the front door as she was getting off a bus which he was driving.
The Dominion Post reports that the bus had begun rolling forward while the woman was trapped and hanging from the door, but when the driver was alerted by passengers, he leapt from his seat to help the woman but didn’t park the bus and it started rolling.
Davies told the ERA the incident was shocking, and his employer learnt about the incident after the woman contacted Greater Wellington Regional Council subsidiary Metlink and laid a verbal complaint.
At the end of his shift Davies was met at the depot by a superior who raised the issue about the complaint the company had received, and Davies was suspended pending the outcome of an investigation. At that stage the ERA decision noted he filled out an incident report and Go Wellington held an investigation a week later.
ERA member Paul Stapp says Go Wellington had treated the Metlink’s email as a formal complaint document. However under clause 61 of the union’s collective agreement the company should have produced a signed document, confirmed by the complainant, he says.
This was not done and reliance on the email from Metlink was not sufficient to meet the requirements of the collective agreement, according to Stapp.
Stapp went on to say the details of the emailed complaint from Metlink had not been independently confirmed by Go Wellington, and because the complaint was “unconfirmed” it should not have been the basis for discipline, he ruled.
“There is no evidence of any deliberate or wilful driver fault in regard to closing the door on the passenger’s arm and it was considered as an accident, albeit a very serious one,” says Stapp.
Davies was reinstated to his position by the ERA on Wednesday and awarded $2000 in compensation.
