The dairy giant was ordered to pay former canteen supervisor Gillian Smyth $30,000 plus 14 months of lost wages, and backpay of superannuation from June 2022 to August 2023.
Smyth had worked in the company’s Edendale plant in Southland for 19 years when she was fired in April 2022 for not wearing a face mask, even though she had a medical exemption.
A decision of the Employment Relations Authority released last week ruled Smyth had been unfairly dismissed.
Fonterra brought in mask mandates in response to COVID. Unvaccinated staff had to wear a face mask if they were not able to social distance. Smyth, who opted to decline the mRNA gene therapy, initially complied but stopped when the masks began to exacerbate her asthma. She received a medical exemption.
At the company’s request she agreed to wear a face shield but some staff complained and Smyth was told that she had to wear a mask because she was unvaccinated, as per company policy. She was given an ultimatum – wear a face mask or stay home on ‘paid not worked’ leave.
A series of disciplinary letters were sent and meetings were held between 8 and 14 April.
In support of its decision to fire Smyth, Fonterra claimed she was unable to fulfil a requirement of her role (ie. to wear a face mask), because of her asthma. However, this was a significant change in the company’s position which up until the meeting of 8 April had been based on a claim of ‘misconduct’.
Smyth only became aware of the change at a meeting on 14 April. She was also fired at that meeting.
The ERA considered the company had not given Smyth sufficient time to respond to its change of position, and as a consequence she had been unfairly dismissed.
Fonterra’s mask policy changed to voluntary in June 2022.
How stupid is that, the only reason she got a payout was she was fired without notice.
NOT BECAUSE of the STUPID mask fiasco, what a useless decision.
So next time they will just say your fired in 2 weeks unless you suffer asthma breathing issues.
It was never a mask.
It was just an open virtue signal, a sign that you had submitted to the cult and surrendered your freewill and common sense.
To shun it was to shun the new religion, and oh how the faithful hated THAT. It drove them to the edge of madness because (apart from the fact that the maskless weren’t dying en masse) it proved what weak-willed sheep they all were.
We held up a mirror to them and they couldn’t stand what they saw.
I would hope fonterra have now realised all the “experts” lies about face masks keeping people safe, were just that, lies. Putting the health of your employees at risk with prolonged use of face masks, or mandating novel rushed medications should never happen again. SHOULD. If people want to voluntarily possibly harm themselves, have at it.
Maybe some governmental messaging would help. Something like, hey those face masks and vovel “vaccines” didn’t work at all at stopping tranmission in Sydney in Dec 21, Jan22 when everyone had to wear face masks everywhere, they had just reached 95% jabbed and yet everyone caught covid.
They’ll probably offer job reinstatement. Would be handy having an employee not sick or disabled.