An engineer working on the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project has been awarded nearly $14,000 after being fired for making “extremely insulting” comments about his boss in a private WhatsApp group and encouraging colleagues to resign.

The Fair Work Commission found there were valid grounds for the engineer’s dismissal but ruled that construction company Endacom had failed to give him procedural fairness.

Commissioner Stephen Crawford found the dismissal was therefore harsh, unjust and unreasonable.

The engineer worked as a project engineer for Endacom on the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project from June 2022 until November 2025.

In late October last year, he resigned and gave eight weeks’ notice.

But just days later, Endacom summarily dismissed him for serious misconduct.

The company had discovered messages he posted in a private WhatsApp group involving nine Endacom engineers on the day he resigned.

The messages included “insulting and offensive” comments about his direct manager, as well as encouragement for colleagues to resign from the company.

Private messages

Crawford found the engineer had breached his employment contract by posting the messages, despite them being sent outside work.

“Although [he] was not at work when he sent the messages, some of the recipients were at work and all the participants in the group were employees of Endacom,” Crawford said.

“The chat was used to share work and personal information. I consider [his] conduct was sufficiently connected to his employment to constitute a breach of his employment contract.”

However, the engineer was never told that Endacom had seen the messages or that they were being relied on as grounds for his dismissal.

He was also not given an opportunity to respond to the allegations.

The messages had been posted in a private WhatsApp group and the engineer had not intended for Endacom management to see them.

FWC heard that a manager viewed the WhatsApp conversation on a worker’s laptop and photographed the messages.

Crawford found that this contributed to the dismissal being harsh.

“[The] dismissal was harsh because he never intended for Endacom management to view the relevant messages and they were only identified because [the manager] started reading material on [a] computer,” the decision said.

The engineer was earning $190,000 plus superannuation and lost 7.5 weeks of employment as a result of the dismissal, representing more than $27,000 in lost wages.

However, the FWC reduced his compensation by 50% to account for his misconduct.

He will receive $13,700 in compensation, plus $1,644 in superannuation.

The risks of workplace messages

The case is the latest in a series of FWC decisions highlighting the risks of using workplace messaging platforms and private chats to vent about colleagues or managers.

Earlier this year, an Australian Amazon employee was fired for making “smart-arse” Slack messages.

FWC ordered the employee to be reinstated, finding that while the messages were unprofessional, their context and the casual nature of the Slack environment needed to be considered.

In March, a Sydney-based Java software developer lost his job after becoming “ungovernable”, with his use of AI to write workplace emails among the issues considered by FWC.

The commission heard that the AI-generated messages were “dense, repetitive and often rambling”, as well as “demanding and overbearing”.