Subtitles had Hitler yelling at his generals "we made up facts and figures to suit our case" and referencing workers' rejection of the company's agreement with 98 per cent "no" votes and only four "yes" votes.

"I offered the carrot, I tried using the stick," he was captioned saying.

"Don't they know I'm in charge?... But I made promises to London ... I can't afford to get fired from another job again."

The technician posted a link to the video on a closed Facebook group whose members were all refinery employees and also showed it to colleagues on his nightshift.

But when BP discovered the video they believed it demeaned refinery manager Brett Swayn and stood down the technician while it launched a three-month investigation.

Manager 'a mass murderer'?

The company eventually concluded that by synchronising Hitler's speech with words previously said by senior managers "the video likens one with the other".

As one of BP's HR managers explained, the technician's behaviour was "a serious breach of the code of conduct because the video is inappropriate".


"In particular, it is a parody about the Kwinana refinery and its management team [without their permission], in which it compares Brett Swayn to Hitler [who was a man who committed genocide and mass murder].”

The technician initially refused to say who created the video but later blamed his wife, who worked in a pharmacy store.

He said the video was intended to be humorous and to "boost morale".

Following the investigation, BP sacked the technician immediately and paid him out four weeks' pay in lieu of his notice period.

Considering his unfair dismissal claim, Ms Binet found the technician was significantly involved in the creation of the video.

She also found it was arguably worse that he shared the video in a private Facebook group as it was made up of the workers who "could easily draw parallels" with the identities involved.

Those workers were people who Mr Swayn and his managers "must establish a critical relationship of mutual trust and confidence given the highly volatile and dangerous product, systems and equipment with which they all work".

The deputy president rejected the technician's defence that the parody video could not reasonably be regarded as depicting BP's negotiation team as Hitler, Nazis, mass murderers or lunatics.


"I do not accept that by labelling something as a parody is a ‘get out of jail free card’ and necessarily means something is not offensive," she said.

"A racist joke is by name humour but is likely to offend a person of the nationality at which it is aimed."

She also rejected comparisons to the 2013 case of Grant Williams, the Asia equity head for investment bank Jefferies who was sacked for sharing a Downfall video mocking JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

A Hong Kong judge later ruled the firing was "hypersensitive" and that it was not rational to suggest the video denoted a "racist or anti-Semitic connotation".

The deputy president said that case involved "different laws and cultural norms" and the relevant employee was found not be responsible for sharing the video.

She said the technician's sharing of the Hitler video among colleagues failed to treat BP senior managers with respect or professionalism, as required by the code of conduct.

The technician's seven years in the job and the "heavy emotional and financial impact of the dismissal on [him] and his family" also did not make his sacking harsh or unjust, she said.