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It was fair to summarily dismiss a worker who refused to change behaviour that reflected badly on his employer, even though the termination process was flawed, the Fair Work Commission has accepted.

The employer's process "could have been handled in a better way", but that was outweighed by the employee's clear refusal to follow a lawful direction, and his "subsequent completely unacceptable behaviour", said Commissioner Chris Simpson.

The employee had been performing about four hours of casual gardening and maintenance work per week for seven months at the Oonoonba Hotel in northern Queensland when he was dismissed in February this year.

According to the employer, a Facebook post had raised concerns about two dogs being tied up in the back of a ute, on hot days without shade, for hours at a time. Comments on the post identified the venue as the hotel, and the dogs' owner as one of its employees.

Concerned about the business being associated with animal mistreatment or viewed as condoning it, the venue manager approached the employee after his shift on 17 February to discuss the post...