No, drinking while WFH is not OK
Drinking alcohol on duty can justify serious sanctions even when you’re working from home, the workplace umpire has ruled, after a teacher disputed having his pay docked for drinking cask wine during a Zoom call.
The Fair Work Commission upheld ACT Lyneham Primary School’s decision to issue teacher Anthony Duncan a written warning and reduce his pay for 12 months for “inappropriate” conduct in breach of its alcohol policy.
The school took the disciplinary action after a supervisor saw Mr Duncan during a 11am one-on-one remote conversation “pick up a cask of wine, lift it above his head and open the tap to drink from it”.
But Mr Duncan challenged the sanction by arguing he was not at the workplace and was not supervising children at the time.
FWC deputy president Lyndall Dean said the school’s alcohol policy still applied as the conduct took place during work hours.
“Whether his home is or is not a workplace does not change the fact that the applicant consumed alcohol while working and during his normal hours of duty,” she said.
At the time, the ACT’s COVID-19 lockdown was in place and Mr Duncan was under a direction to work from home and prepare materials for “remote learning” with students.
The meeting with his supervisor was to talk about how to manage the lockdown and what teachers had to do to prepare for remote learning.
‘Hyperbolic and lacking veracity’
Mr Duncan argued in his appeal of the school’s decision that the “allegations against me are hyperbolic and lacking veracity”.
However, he later admitted to smoking during the meeting – for which he was not sanctioned – and consuming alcohol.
But he denied that he had been affected by the alcohol and said he thought the meeting was over when he took the drink.
In any case, he said the conversation was “private” in the sense that there were only two in the discussion and he had no student duties that day.
His home was not a workplace, he said, and as a result he could not have breached the code of conduct as he did not consume alcohol on the school premises.
The ACT Education Department’s appeal board was not persuaded. It said that if Mr Duncan’s claim was right “then a teacher could smoke and consume alcohol in front of children in an online classroom setting”.
It noted that if a person was affected by alcohol at work, it could constitute serious misconduct and result in termination.
Ms Dean agreed. “It is irrelevant that the applicant was not responsible for the supervision of students afterwards,” she said.
“The policy is clear that no alcohol is to be consumed during hours of duty regardless of any supervision obligations.”
Even if the conversation was private, it was “work-related discussion conducted during work time”.
She held the sanction was reasonable and proportionate in all the circumstances.
The decision follows a NSW Personal Injury Commission ruling this year that upheld awarding workers’ compensation to a NSW Health employee who was attacked by a dog while working from home.
The ruling backed findings that there was a work connection to the injury because her boss required her to reduce noise levels while taking work calls.
This led her to take her daughter’s puppy outside, which was then attacked by a neighbour’s dog who then bit the employee when she intervened.
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