A storage site manager who was sexually harassed by a contractor and a customer at his workplace has been awarded $90,000 compensation under a new Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) provision.
In his Federal Circuit and Family Court decision published last month, Brisbane Judge Salvatore Vasta ordered the perpetrators pay a total of $116,000, with each also fined $13,000.
Judge Vasta described the application of Section 527D, which was introduced in 2023 to expressly prohibit sexual harassment of a worker, prospective worker or person conducting a business or undertaking.
He said the original application also alleged the manager’s employer was vicariously liable for the breaches under s 527D. When it was shown the perpetrators were never employees of the company, the applicant discontinued the action “but that does not in any way derogate from the seriousness of the conduct that has brought us here to court”, Judge Vasta said.
The applicant began work at Storage King facility in Queensland as a consultant in September 2023. His role eventually expanded to that of a full-site manager.
From late 2024 or early 2025, he became the target of homophobic and sexualised statements from the cleaning and maintenance contractor and the regular customer.
The statements included “Oh, the gay boy is cleaning again”, “He probably likes it that way”, “You sure you are not just into blokes?”, that the applicant was “getting tied up and left in a shed”, and that the applicant would “get raped in the shed”.
The applicant said he was regularly referred to as the “gay boy”, “the storage queen”, and “the office boy”, and had been called “poof”.
The harassment also included unwanted physical contact, such as shoving and bumping.
The applicant said he felt degraded and hurt because of the implication that his basic work tasks had a sexual nature or motive or origin.
Eventually he was dismissed after taking personal leave.
“It seems to me that whilst I can safely say that the sexual harassment was initiated by the second respondent, that soon after, when the third respondent joined in on this activity, that this ended up being almost like a game between the second and third respondents, where they would bounce off each other to make the applicant the butt of the joke and the butt of the joke simply because they ascribed to him, whether they were serious or not, homosexual orientation,” Judge Vasta said.
“I do not know what orientation the applicant actually has, but it is irrelevant. The fact is that he is harassed and he has suffered because of it. And s 527D prohibits it from happening as it has happened because of his undertaking work in the workplace.”
Judge Vasta said the descriptions given by the applicant as a result of the conduct were “quite harrowing”.
“The sense of isolation, the sense of degradation, the sense of being totally alone because it is always two against one, and, while this cannot be part of the award of damages, the fact that when he did get the courage to make the complaints, they were not listened to,” he said.
“Even when he provided proof of what was happening by showing a recording that was made of the interchanges that he was having, he was told that he had contravened s 43 of the Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 (Qld). Those aspects as well contributed to the feelings that he had.”
Judge Vasta said given how seriously the applicant had been affected, and that the behaviour was repeated, a “not insignificant sum ought to be awarded for compensation”.
He pointed out that the harassment was not committed by a superior on a subordinate.
“That does not mean that the harassment has any less effect on the applicant but there is not that aggravating feature one would see in workplace harassment that occurs between one of a superior rank to one of a lower rank,” he said.
“Nevertheless, I still find that it is a very serious example of sexual harassment at work.”
Judge Vasta said the fact the perpetrators were not in superior positions was the only matter that mitigated the penalty, but not in a significant way.
He declined to make an order for costs.
Read the decision here.
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