Despite the hysteria of political correctness and health and safety in the workplace, it remains a constant that employers are simply unable to control what their employees say.

Employees are human and if history has taught us anything it’s that humans can be unpredictable. This isn’t some kind of modern breakthrough in the social sciences either, infact it should be kind of obvious.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Ali Iskafi for taking Telstra to court. He’s crying racial vilification over being called a ‘fucking terrorist’ at a work function.

Whether the function was offsite or not hasn’t been made clear. There’s no doubt however that cases like this are going to push the boundaries of just what employers are liable for when it comes to employee interaction.

On the surface of the law suit it appears that a fellow Telstra employee made the terrorist remark at a work function and it appears to have been a once off.

The context of the comment hasn’t been made clear but I’m assuming there was some kind of lead up to the remark as it’s a bit extreme to have just happened randomly.

Context aside though, of note is that Iskafi claims that after the remark was made he ‘suffered a loss of income and earnings and incurred expenses for medical treatment after the incident‘.

Now this is a massively ambiguous claim and is definitely wide open to interpretation.

Firstly was Iskafi fired or did he quit. Suing for loss of income insinuates he was fired or forced to quit. Now I don’t for a second believe Telstra would fire someone on the remark that they were a terrorist from another employee, but perhaps they fired Iskafi for something else. Working as a business sales consultant obviously Iskafi’s sales performance factors into the equation or it could have been another reason he was fired.

If Iskari was fired it does beg the question as to when he was fired as the incident happened over a year ago now in July 2009. I mean why wait so long before launching legal action if the comment has such an alleged detrimental affect on your life?

Otherwise leaving your job over one remark seems a bit soft skinned. As unpleasant as being called a terrorist must have been by a fellow employee it’s not like Telstra doesn’t have its own HR department.

For me this is probably going to be the deciding factor as to whether have Telstra have a case to answer for, or whether this is just a disgruntled ex-employee looking for a pay out.

Telstra no doubt have an internal policy on this sort of stuff so it begs the question as to whether the incident went reported and if so, what was the outcome? One would think calling a fellow employee a ‘fucking terrorist’ would be virtually grounds for instant dismissal or at least some serious reprimanding.

As for medical treatment expenses, I can’t help but wonder what Iskafi’s playing at there. I mean short of falling over in shock following the remark, how exactly does being called a terrorist result in medical expenses? Presumably they’re quite extensive to warrant being tacked onto the court case but this only raises more questions over exactly what Iskafi’s claiming.

At the end of the day though as much as I’d like to brush this off as another case of ‘harden the fuck up’ I do think the comment is a bit on the harsh side. As for whether Telstra are responsible, well only if they didn’t do anything about it or somehow actively encouraged the behaviour.

If your boss said it during an appraisal then yeah sure, Telstra most definitely have something to answer for. Some random employee saying at a work function though?

Well that’s hardly Telstra’s fault and how exactly are they supposed to prevent it happening?

No doubt there’s already been a bout of HR emails sent out and a bunch of posters put up around Telstra reminding everyone to hold hands and put on a happy face, but at the end of the day people will be people.

It would be interesting to know if the employee who made the comments is still working at Telstra and why Iskari isn’t taking direct action against him or her. I mean surely calling someone a terrorist in a professional capacity leaves you personally liable for your comments?

The cynic in me wants to put it down to an individual not having as much money as a corporation but well, y’know… a spade is a spade and all that.

Hopefully this case gets thrown out as I don’t really like the precedent it’s going to set if by some miracle Iskari wins. Workplace politics in many offices is already ridiculous and cases like this going ahead is only going to make the environments more awkward to work in.