Case Name: BUCKEYE CELLULOSE CORPORATION, Appellant, v. Robert T. WILLIAMS and the Florida Unemployment Appeals Commission, Appellees
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1988-01-14
Citations: 522 So. 2d 39
Docket Number: No. BT-228
Parties: BUCKEYE CELLULOSE CORPORATION, Appellant, v. Robert T. WILLIAMS and the Florida Unemployment Appeals Commission, Appellees.
Judges: ZEHMER, J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 522
Pages: 39–41

Head Matter:
BUCKEYE CELLULOSE CORPORATION, Appellant, v. Robert T. WILLIAMS and the Florida Unemployment Appeals Commission, Appellees.
No. BT-228.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.
Jan. 14, 1988.
As Modified on Denial of Rehearing March 17, 1988.
Jann Johnson and Rebecca S. Conlan, of Ausley, McMullen, McGehee, Carothers & Proctor, Tallahassee, and Marc S. Krass, Sr. Counsel for the Buckeye Cellulose Corp., Cincinnati, Ohio, for appellant.
John D. Maher, Tallahassee, for appel-lees.

Opinion:
SHIVERS, Judge,
Buckeye Cellulose Corporation (Buckeye) appeals an order of the Unemployment Appeals Commission affirming the decision of an appeals referee of the Unemployment Compensation Appeals Bureau that appel-lee Robert T. Williams is entitled to receive unemployment compensation benefits because he voluntarily left his job with Buckeye for good cause. We affirm the Unemployment Appeals Commission on all issues and find that the issue whether the referee's findings of fact are sufficient to support his conclusions merits discussion. Based on the record we conclude the evidence is sufficiently competent and substantial to support the final order. The referee is the fact finder and his findings have been affirmed by the agency. We did not hear the testimony and are not in a better or even equal position to evaluate the credibility of witnesses. As we stated in Greenberg v. Simms Merchant Police Service, 410 So.2d 566 (Fla. 1st DCA 1982), "a telephone conference is far superior to a cold, written record." Id. at 567.
Appellee Williams declared that when he quit his job in June, he told his department manager Larry James that he was leaving because of the harassment and pressure. He testified that he was coming to work and doing his job, but that every time he turned around his work was being questioned. He stated that he had gone to a drug treatment center for 30 days during the first part of the year; that his supervisor Larry James was new and when James found out where he had been and what he had been for, that he was then constantly accused of doing something wrong. Williams said that the same job he had been doing correctly for three years all of a sudden turned wrong, that he could not do it right anymore for the supervisor. Claimant Williams testified that on two separate occasions he was bumped from his shift by a junior employee whom claimant had trained and that claimant was reduced in pay grade. He testified that when he returned from drug treatment he was free and clear of problems, that he and "everyone else" thought he had picked up and improved considerably, and that his goals were to do a satisfactory job. Claimant was of the opinion, and the referee found claimant's opinion to be well reasoned, that his earlier involvement in drug abuse became the occasion for the supervisor to subject him to unfair and discriminatory treatment. Indeed, the employer's only witness, who did not know the claimant and testified on the basis of secondhand information, confirmed that claimant had complained about harassment in March, two months before he quit. The referee found that the claimant had offered sufficient evidence from which it could be concluded that the harassment to which he was subjected was sufficient to constitute good cause for claimant to leave his employment. We cannot substitute our judgment as to the weight of the evidence on any disputed fact even though we might have reached a different conclusion on the same evidence. The question of the weight of the evidence is for the administrative agency and not for the courts. Florida Motor Lines Corporation v. Douglass, 150 Fla. 1, 7 So.2d 843 (1941) and 1 Fla.Jur.2d Administrative Law § 175. There is eviden-tiary basis for the referee's finding that Mr. Williams was harassed and that this harassment supplied the good cause for Williams to leave his employment.
AFFIRMED.
ZEHMER, J., concurs.
THOMPSON, J., dissents, with opinion.