Fair Work's deputy commissioner rejected a former Woolworths employee's unfair dismissal claim for being told to cover his bum crack, saying it was evidently a speculative claim made in pursuit of a monetary settlement.
Case Dismissed Over Plumber's Crack
Fair Work Commission deputy president Alan Colman rejected a Victorian man's case, warning there is no disincentive for speculative claims. The former Woolworths employee was accused of wasting the commission's time for filing an unfair dismissal case over feeling upset at being told to cover up his bum crack.
In a decision published on Thursday, Colman said he rejected the man's application for compensation in part because the dismissal never occurred. It was the man's fifth application in two years.
Colman paraphrased that the complainant, while working a casual shift at the supermarket, was told by a co-worker that the cleft of his bottom was protruding from his trousers and it was suggested in rude terms that he cover up. In layperson's terms, the complainant was referring to the exposure of his bum crack, also known colloquially as the builder's bum or plumber's crack, an unfortunate yet common occurrence for people in jobs with regular bending and movement.
Colman said the complainant was upset and his feelings were hurt. He lodged an application alleging that he had been dismissed in breach of his workplace rights under Part 3-1 of the act. He wanted compensation. But Woolworths countered that the man continued to work shifts after lodging his claim and later stopped turning up for work, contrary to his application.
Colman stated the complainant was not dismissed and had no standing to make the application. This case had nothing to do with dismissal. It was evidently a speculative claim made in pursuit of a monetary settlement that would spare Woolworths the nuisance of defending it.
Colman said he was unable to put that argument to the complainant because he ignored his direction to attend the telephone hearing. Unmeritorious claimants have little to lose, he said. This is unfair to respondents who have no case to answer and to applicants with cases of substance waiting their turn to be heard. Very often there are no compensable costs, only wasted time. There is no effective disincentive for speculative claims, and so they come in great numbers, compounding the commission's burgeoning caseload.
Lodgements to the Fair Work Commission have surged in the past five years, rising from 29,631 in 2020-21 to 44,075 in 2024-25. They are expected to continue climbing in excess of 50,000 in the coming year.
President of the Fair Work Commission, Justice Adam Hatcher, told the Victorian Bar in February that the proliferation of AI tools including ChatGPT since 2022 was a main driver for the surge. In the previous decade, there was a clear correlation between the number of dismissal-related applications and the state of the labour market. However, that statistical relationship has broken down in the last couple of years. The clue that the growth in lodgments was AI-driven first became apparent by the widespread use of AI-generated language in the applications being filed. Once you learn what this looks like, it becomes pretty easy to spot.
