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A senior employee's "entirely unhelpful and disruptive intervention" in an employer's efforts to trial a four-day work week wasn't serious misconduct that warranted summary dismissal, according to the Fair Work Commission.

The TL Engineering team lead fitter claimed his dismissal in March this year was too harsh, and that a lesser sanction would have sufficed.

He told the Commission that late last year, about half of the employer's workforce expressed interest in its proposal to start working 38 hours over four days, and over the following two months, meetings were held to discuss what this would look like.

The employee claimed that during this time there was "a lot of workplace chatter" expressing concerns over working hours, particularly the option of overtime on Saturdays...