Ferry Worker Fired After Taking 114 Sick Days In 12 Months – The Hook news

A Brisbane ferry worker who spent nearly two decades on the city’s river network has lost her unfair dismissal case after Australia’s Fair Work Commission found her employer had a valid reason to terminate her employment following 114 days of sickness absence in a 12-month period, amid a prolonged dispute over whether she would be able to return to the full duties of her role.

Jodie Daunis had worked in Brisbane’s ferry industry since 2008 and was employed as a customer service operator on the CityCat network, later working for RiverCity Ferries, which operates under the Kelsian Group. Her case turned on a long-running medical struggle involving deep vein thrombosis and other clotting-related complications that, according to evidence before the commission, increasingly affected her ability to remain on her feet and perform safety-sensitive duties aboard moving vessels.

The commission heard that Daunis had first developed deep vein thrombosis years earlier, but her health problems worsened significantly in April 2024, when she experienced recurrent superficial thrombophlebitis and related complications. Medical advice at the time urged her to take an extended period away from work to recover. Over the following year, her absences mounted as she dealt with ongoing pain, recurrent clotting and uncertainty over treatment. In the 12 months leading up to mid-April 2025, the employer recorded 114 days of sick leave and other illness-related absences.

According to the evidence later reported from the tribunal process, Daunis had been referred for surgery in late 2024, but the procedure did not take place at that stage after her insurer declined to cover it, leaving her on a public hospital waiting list instead. In April 2025, her condition deteriorated further and she was admitted to hospital with DVT. She was absent for about a week and, after trying to return, managed only two shifts before pain again made it difficult to carry out her work.

The case laid bare the pressure that prolonged illness can place on both employee and employer in physically demanding roles. Daunis told the commission she had attempted to work through the condition but had been advised against doing so. “I tried taking a day off and coming back. Dr Hagley wanted me to have three months off to fully heal the clots,” she said in evidence quoted by 7NEWS. That evidence formed part of her argument that she had not abandoned the job and still hoped to return, particularly once surgery had been completed.

Later in April 2025, Daunis told her employer that both a vascular surgeon and a blood specialist had advised she should remain away from work for a further three months. The question that eventually became central to the dismissal was not whether she had genuinely been unwell, but whether, at the time the company made its decision, there was reliable medical evidence showing that she would be able to resume the inherent requirements of her role within a reasonable period.

An independent medical examination was conducted in June 2025, but the report did not settle the issue. Instead, it became the main source of dispute. Daunis and the Maritime Union of Australia argued that the assessment left open a pathway back to work after surgery and supported the prospect of a future return. The employer read the same material differently, saying it confirmed that she was not then capable of safely carrying out the full duties of the job and that any prediction of recovery remained too uncertain.

That dispute mattered because the role itself was not a desk-based one. The commission heard that CityCat customer service operators were rostered into fixed shifts and were required to work long periods standing on vessels, in an environment where operational reliability and safety were significant considerations. Kelsian and RiverCity Ferries said they could not reasonably redesign the role around shorter or lighter duties without causing wider staffing and cost problems.

Paul Rigby, the company’s general manager, told the commission that the structure of the roster made the proposed changes difficult to accommodate. “Full-time staff are allocated a roster line … bringing more people into that roster line is impractical and would require the employment of additional casual employees at additional costs,” he said, according to 7NEWS. The company argued that reduced hours or modified duties for Daunis would create a ripple effect across other staff and undermine the way ferry operations were organised.

Daunis, supported by her union, contended that reasonable adjustments should have been considered more fully. She argued that lighter duties, staged shifts or temporary modifications could have allowed her to remain employed while awaiting surgery and recovering from her condition. Her side also relied on the broader principle that employers should not move too quickly to dismiss workers where illness is genuine and some prospect of future recovery remains.

But Commissioner Chris Simpson ultimately found that, viewed at the time of dismissal rather than with hindsight, the evidence did not establish that Daunis would be able to return to full duties in the foreseeable future. In one of the ruling’s central findings, he said the June medical material “fell well short” of proving that she would be able to resume her role any time soon. He added: “I do not accept that the report conclusively determined that Ms Daunis could fulfil the inherent requirements of her role in the future. I am satisfied that the evidence does not support such a conclusion.”

The commissioner also accepted the employer’s case on workplace adjustments. In a passage quoted in multiple reports of the decision, he said: “I accept, taking into account the nature of the working arrangements, and the impact on other staff, and cost to the respondent in making accommodations as proposed for Ms Daunis that they are not practical or reasonable in this case and that there was no reasonable adjustment that could have been made to Ms Daunis’ role to accommodate her current or future incapacity given the nature of her role.”

The ruling meant the commission did not treat the dismissal, which took effect on 1 July 2025, as harsh, unjust or unreasonable under Australian unfair dismissal law. Reporting of the decision indicates Daunis received notice pay and an additional week’s pay in lieu of notice, but her bid to overturn the termination failed. The case therefore became less a dispute about whether she had been sick, which was not seriously contested, and more a judgment about capacity, timing and the practical limits of accommodating illness in a frontline transport role.

An important part of the case was that later medical developments did not undo the legal position the commission said existed at the time. According to the reporting of the judgment, Daunis was eventually cleared after the dismissal to return to full duties without restrictions. However, the commission did not allow that later clearance to replace the facts facing the employer when it made its decision in mid-2025. In effect, the case turned on what was known then, not on what became clear months later.

The outcome closes a difficult chapter for a worker whose long service on Brisbane’s ferries stretched back about 17 years and whose illness appears to have derailed both her daily working life and her planned treatment path. It also highlights how employment tribunals can distinguish between sympathy for a worker’s personal circumstances and the narrower legal question of whether an employer had a sound, defensible reason to act when it did. In Daunis’s case, the commission concluded that the employer’s concerns about her capacity, and the operational burden of trying to restructure the job around her limitations, were enough to justify the dismissal.