The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has dropped a legal appeal after a five-year-long dispute with a former senior employee.
Jasmine Chambers claimed she was unfairly fired from the BoM in 2019, after a disagreement relating to an international work trip.
Chambers said she flew business class and extended the trip by two days, with her employer’s permission. The BoM claimed it did not grant her approval.
The court sided with Chambers, saying she had done nothing wrong by taking leave. Both parties have now settled outside of court.
Unfair dismissal
Chambers is a science communicator and marketer. She worked at the University of Sydney for 21 years before being headhunted by the BoM in 2018.
In June 2019, she travelled to Paris for a United Nations conference as the BoM’s General Manager of Global and National Science Relations.
According to court documents, she flew business class and “took two days of annual leave in addition to some other personal time off.” The trip, “including all time off” was approved by her manager.
Upon returning, Chambers was subject to an audit after being told the flights, leave and expenses she had claimed were only available to senior executive employees.
In August 2019, Chambers was told she did not pass her probation and would be dismissed. She threatened legal action, and the Bureau reversed its decision.
In November of that year, Chambers failed a performance review.
She then lodged a complaint with the Government’s public service regulator — the Merit Protection Commissioner (MPS).
The MPS found the BoM’s review – which labelled her performance “unsatisfactory” – was unfounded and lacked evidence.
Later that month, the BoM announced an organisation restructure, and Chambers was told her role had been made redundant.
Chambers finished up with the Bureau in December 2020, after she accepted a redundancy payout.
In April 2022, Chambers submitted a Federal Court claim, accusing the BoM of multiple breaches of the Fair Work Act.
Ruling
The case heard in the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia found Chambers had satisfactorily proven the BoM had breached her workplace rights on multiple occassions.
These included threatening to dismiss Chambers and wrongly rating her performance as ‘unsatisfactory’ in August 2019.
The Presiding Judge Douglas Humphreys said he believed Chambers’s dismissal was “adverse action was taken against” in response to her “exercising her workplace rights.”
BoM
After the court handed down its ruling in 2024, the BoM launched an appeal.
It argued there were several “fundamental errors and flaws” in the court’s judgment that showed a “bias” and lacked fairness.
A BoM spokesperson told TDA that it has since dropped plans to pursue an appeal.
The Bureau has reached a settlement deal with Chambers instead.
Chamber’s Lawyers
Maurice Blackburn Lawyers represented Chambers in the Federal Circuit court.
The law firm said their client always “had a strong case which was unnecessarily drawn out”.
Principal lawyer Mia Pantechis said years of legal action takes “a toll on people who stand up for their workplace rights.”
