Fair Work Commission finds oil refinery technician was not comparing his bosses to Hitler when he posted Downfall meme

An oil refinery worker who was sacked for creating a Downfall parody of his bosses has had his job reinstated, after the Fair Work Commission ruled the “memetic context” of the video meant it was unreasonable to find he was comparing them to Nazis.

The worker, a technician on a BP refinery in Western Australia, was originally sacked after he used an oft-parodied scene from the 2004 film by Oliver Hirschbiegel about the final days of Hitler and Nazi Germany to depict his bosses during a tense wage negotiation.