An Invercargill literacy tutor who last year won an Employment Relations Authority (ERA) case after he resigned with ''hurt feelings'', has now lost another involving a second employer.
Last year, Patrick O'Sullivan was awarded $2500 from Southern Adult Literacy Inc, after successfully arguing he resigned because his employers failed to act in good faith.
The amount of money he sought was significantly reduced because of what the ERA described as Mr O'Sullivan's ''alienating'' style during a long-running workplace dispute, which including describing his employers as ''collectively generating less neural power than a pickled walnut''.
Now, the ERA has found Literacy Training Ltd was justified in dismissing Mr O'Sullivan in September, 2009, for his refusal to comply with company instructions and his ''intransigence''.
Mr O'Sullivan was employed in mid-2008 on a two-year fixed-term contract to teach literacy and numeracy skills programmes to inmates at Invercargill Prison.
Problems first arose in early 2009 when he and the company disagreed over the way inmates' assignments were assessed and marked, and later came to a head over an ''exit policy'', which spelt out when prisoners should leave the programme.
Mr O'Sullivan described the policy as a ''patent absurdity'' and made it quite clear he objected to it.
The response of his supervisor was to tell him the exit policy was to be followed. She told him her instruction was lawful and unchallengeable and he was required to accept it or face the consequences.
He was also told to discuss the issue only with her and not to talk about it with other staff, something Mr O'Sullivan felt amounted to ''a gagging order'' and did not comply with.
On September 1, 2009, Mr O'Sullivan was required to attend a disciplinary meeting to address five concerns.
One of them was alleged inappropriate and disrespectful statements he had made about the company and staff, including an email in which he had compared the company to ''the third Reich''.
Mr O'Sullivan was dismissed after the meeting but lodged a personal grievance. An investigation meeting was held in Invercargill in May this year.
In his decision, released this week, ERA member Michael Loftus said the dismissal was justified.
He said Mr O'Sullivan gave a significant amount of evidence to the ERA about why his views were correct and the company's approach was unwise over marking, assessments and the exit policy.
''The evidence leaves me far from convinced Mr O'Sullivan is correct but, in any event, I do not have to decide the issues. An unwise commercial decision (if indeed these were) does not render a resulting instruction unlawful, unsafe, or unreasonable, or at least did not in this case.
''Once a decision had been made, explained and communicated as occurred here, Mr O'Sullivan was under a duty to obey. Instead, he chose to do otherwise, and his evidence, along with the way it was presented, made it clear he had no intention of ever bowing to his employer's instructions.''
In the face of ''such intrasigence'' the company was entitled to conclude the employment relationship was no longer sustainable, Mr Loftus said.
