His family member was in intensive care. The company classified the phone check as potentially fatal
A fertiliser plant operator dismissed after nearly 30 years has had the decision overturned for a botched disciplinary process.
The Authority ruled on September 23 that Ballance Agri-Nutrients Limited unjustifiably dismissed the worker from its Mount Maunganui manufacturing site - and unjustifiably suspended him before that.
The worker had been with Ballance since 1996, starting casually before moving into a permanent role as an acidulation plant operator in 2004. The acidulation plant - where phosphate rock is treated with strong acid to produce granulated fertiliser - carried identified hazards including entrapment risks, moving conveyors, and cutting machinery.
On January 9, 2025, the worker was acting as a safety watch for a colleague replacing a lubrication block on a grease line. The job was straightforward: maintain line of sight, stay near an emergency stop button, and be ready to hit it. Those requirements sat in clause 7.4.4 of the plant's standard operating procedure.
He was on his phone instead.
But the context mattered. A family member was in intensive care, and the worker was fielding messages to support his partner through the crisis.
Ballance investigated and found the worker had breached the safety procedure. He had only partial line of sight of his colleague, was not close to an emergency stop, and was distracted by his phone. On substance, the Authority accepted that finding. A fair and reasonable employer could conclude the breach amounted to serious misconduct - a one-off act of negligence at a safety-sensitive site.
The process was where it fell apart.
Four days after the incident, Ballance invited the worker to a disciplinary meeting. It handed over statements from two managers. What it did not hand over was the statement from the colleague he had been watching - the very person whose safety was supposedly at risk.
That missing statement mattered. At the Authority's hearing, the colleague referred to a photograph showing where he had been working and said he had no concerns for his own safety, given the nature of the task and his distance from the conveyor belt.
The worker never got the chance to put that to Ballance during the disciplinary process.
There was another gap. Ballance classified the incident as a "HiPo" event - defined under its own risk framework as any event with the realistic potential for a major or catastrophic consequence, up to and including a fatality. That classification drove the decision to dismiss. But the company did not tell the worker it had made that call until the day it handed him his termination letter - January 23, 2025.
The Authority found Ballance did not adequately consider alternatives to dismissal either. Neither the preliminary outcome letter nor the dismissal letter addressed alternatives, and it was unclear how much weight the company gave the worker's roughly 30 years of service and otherwise exemplary record.
The suspension that preceded the dismissal was separately found unjustified. On January 9, the worker was called into a meeting without being told its purpose, what allegations he faced, or that suspension was on the table. He received a suspension letter 43 minutes after the meeting began.
The Authority called these significant procedural defects.
On remedies, the Authority ordered Ballance to pay $9,800 compensation for the unjustified dismissal and $1,750 for the unjustified suspension, plus $18,773.49 in lost wages covering 13 weeks. All figures were reduced by 30 percent to reflect the worker's own contribution - he did breach the safety procedure.
The Authority accepted that the worker had not been active on the job front in the weeks after dismissal but found that was reasonable. After three decades with one employer, a summary dismissal he struggled to understand, and a flawed process, it would have taken time to find his feet.
For HR teams running safety-related disciplinary processes, the case is a practical reminder: getting the substantive finding right is not enough. If the investigation withholds evidence or springs a critical classification on the employee at the point of termination, the dismissal can still fail - even where the underlying misconduct is real.
The determination is a decision of the Employment Relations Authority and may be subject to challenge.
