Drunk worker is dumped from her $130,000-a-year job for shocking act inside a Qantas lounge

A FIFO employee earning $130,000 a year has been fired after drunkenly sexually harassing two male colleagues in a Qantas lounge and on a flight.

Evelyn Josey, who worked for OS MCAP, BHP’s in-house employment agency, was dismissed from her position just before Christmas last year for serious misconduct.

She took the matter to the Fair Work Commission and last week her bid for unfair dismissal was rejected.

She had demanded six months’ compensation and returned to her old job.

But Commissioner Sharon Durham did not find her dismissal harsh or unreasonable.

Ms Josey was found to have sexually harassed her colleagues by rubbing her body against one of them in the airport lounge, placing her head on another’s lap while on the plane, and repeatedly grabbing his hand.

Ms Josey had arrived at Brisbane Airport on July 18 last year to fly to Moranbah, a mining town in eastern Queensland where the Duania mine site is located, ahead of her shift the next day.

She had been drinking that afternoon and was “extremely drunk” when she arrived at the Qantas lounge, where a number of her colleagues were sitting.

Some of her colleagues described Ms. Josey’s behavior as “out of character and quite erratic” when she ordered two bourbon and Cokes at the bar.

She approached one of her colleagues at the bar, turned her body toward him and rubbed against him, the FWC heard.

Once aboard the plane, Ms. Josey sat next to another colleague, put her head in his lap, grabbed his arm and intertwined her fingers with his.

“I was just having a harder time that day and I didn’t feel like going to work, and I started drinking really early,” she said.

She admitted she turned to alcohol in December 2021 when her relationship with her partner of 26 years broke down.

She said she had developed a drinking problem and also had mental health problems.

After the drunken encounters with her colleagues, Ms Josey told her shift leader that she was not fit to work the next day and was instead taking five weeks off.

Commissioner Durham admitted that she has sobered up since the incidents.

Ms Josey also claimed she apologized to the colleague she slept with on the flight and asked him to forgive her.

There were allegations that she also touched the penis of the coworker she rubbed against at the bar, but those claims were unsubstantiated.

However, both men said they were concerned about Ms Josey’s behaviour, with one nervous about flying with her again, and the other worried she knew where he lived because she had dropped him off at home once.

Ms Josey, who is Indigenous, denied sexually harassing her colleagues and instead said she had witnessed or been subjected to “overt racism, misogyny and sexual harassment” herself.

She argued that she should be transferred to another location and allowed to keep her job.

She claimed she had a drink in the Qantas lounge and when she went to put the glass on the table she missed it and spilled the ice on the floor.

Ms Josey was found to have sexually harassed her colleagues by rubbing her body against one of them at the Brisbane Airport Qantas Lounge (pictured)

She claimed that her colleagues then laughed at her and she moved to another table.

Ms Josey also claimed that if the incident had happened as alleged, it was after hours with a friend.

In relation to the incident on the plane, the FIFO employee claimed she was asleep “and as such would not have had the opportunity to make conscious decisions that would constitute sexual harassment,” the FWC heard.

Her male colleague said he pretended to be asleep and “played dead,” but the unwanted touching continued throughout the entire hour-and-a-half flight.

He said he was concerned Ms Josey might have caused a scene if he had asked her to stop as she appeared drunk and erratic.

“As the flight attendants walked by, he looked at them as if to say, ‘I don’t want to be here,’” the commission heard.

Commissioner Durham said that while Ms Josey’s level of intoxication may have had an impact, this “does not and cannot excuse” her behavior.

Her request for unfair dismissal was rejected.