Construction site supervisor who set fire to apprentice pleads guilty in tribunal

[davidc4430]

Construction site supervisor who set fire to apprentice pleads guilty in tribunal

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-17/sa-apprentice-doused-in-flammable-liquid-tribunal-hears/11316...

[tasfleur]

"The tribunal accepted the incident was "horseplay which got out of hand"

Seems to me that the tribunal itself is made up of people whose intelligence ought to be reassessed if they actually think along the lines of the perpetrators of ongoing sheer cruelty and spiteful aggression towards a young person who is there to learn a trade.

Counsel for Rowe — who lost his employment with Tad-Mar Electrical after the incident — had previously told the tribunal that it was "hijinks gone wrong".

"Hijinks" does not even begin to describe what this so called "adult" describes.  Genuine harmless pranks do not threaten the life of another deliberately. 

I hope these men find it very difficult, if not impossible, to get another job that permits them supervision of young people again.  To do what they did as "fun" puts them right in the category of sociopaths.

[davidc4430]

when i was young i had a job in an engineering firm as a general dogs body.

i witnessed many examples of abuse of an aprentice by much older employees in positions of power.

like wrapping him in tape then lifting him up to the ceiling with the overhead crane

sneaking up on him when he was welding and setting his overalls on fire

really stupid stuff.

but to see its still going on now is very disturbing.

to me these fools should be in jail

[springyzone]

It goes way beyond the bounds of hijinks or a practical joke.

It wasn't just one supervisor either, it was two.

I'd like to see the workplace/firm fined the maximum.

I think if that were to happen, what would very soon happen would management would call in all supervisors to meetings and they would all know, in no uncertain terms, that if they saw any bullying anywhere they had to clamp down on it and the perpetrators would likely be sacked.

If the supervisor had himself been subjected to bullying when he started, then it had been going on far too long in that company without any measures to stamp it out.

I'm not sure how on earth this sort of thing was going on in 2017 and the supervisors thought they could get away with it. It reflects very badly on that company. Probably the men thought they were safe because of the earlier stuff they had done and got away with. This is very typical. Some people will push the boundaries further out when there are no consequences. The reason that Chenoweth can be described as 'otherwise a man of good character' is because the man understands consequences and would probably not have tried that on a stranger as he knew very well that it would have legal consequences in the world outside work.

He also needs a hefty personal fine or jail time to teach him it's not okay at work, either.

The only trouble I have with fines is they usually go to the government & not the victims. Mind you, Tad Mar Elecrtrical will probably be up for compensation to the victim.