Cash pay, no signed contract, a rostering app - here's why none of it made him a contractor
A Melbourne events firm said its worker was never an employee. The Fair Work Commission disagreed - and the reasons read like a checklist for HR.
It started with two men who go back a long way. Nikolaos Tzoutzidis and Daniel Annakis have known each other since adolescence and once ran a teenage DJ business together. Years on, Annakis - now managing director of Xenon Events Group, a Melbourne event production company - took Tzoutzidis on for casual "load-out" jobs that needed, in the decision's words, some "muscle."
The arrangement was loose. Thirty dollars an hour, cash, at Annakis' suggestion, with a four-hour minimum. Work trickled in through late 2025. The company shifted Tzoutzidis onto its rostering app, Connecteam, and offered him a casual employment contract on November 24, 2025. He never signed it.
The trouble was money. Tzoutzidis worked a multi-day regional festival, A3, from November 28 to 30, 2025, at an agreed $40 an hour. When the company sent him estimated earnings of $1,530, he pushed back, said he was owed $782.56 more under the Live Performance Award 2020, and argued he was an employee, not a contractor. According to the decision, he claimed the company had engaged in "sham contracting."
From there it got ugly. The decision describes the December messages as collapsing into "abuse, offensive language, veiled threats and recriminations from both men," and the Commission noted the conduct "reflects very poorly on both." Annakis demanded the company's warehouse keys back. On December 4, the company also cancelled shifts Tzoutzidis had been rostered for on December 11 to 14.
The company's defence rested on one move: a jurisdictional objection. Tzoutzidis was never an employee, it argued, so he could not have been dismissed, and the Commission had no power to hear his general protections claim. Everything turned on that - and so does the lesson for HR.
Deputy President Masson applied the test in section 15AA of the Fair Work Act, which tells the Commission to look at the "real substance, practical reality and true nature of the relationship," not the labels the parties used. He then worked through the multi-factorial test drawn from the case law.
Some factors favoured contractor status: no tax was deducted, no superannuation was paid, and Tzoutzidis did other work - Uber driving, fencing, volunteering for a Greek-Australian radio station. But more cut the other way. There was no written contract setting out contractor terms. He had no genuine ability to delegate; the decision records that the company wanted him personally, and that Annakis said he would simply get someone else if Tzoutzidis was unavailable. He was rostered through the app, paid an hourly cash rate with a minimum, required to wear branded clothing on site, and carried no business insurances - which the company never asked him to hold.
The verdict: he was an employee. And he was dismissed under section 386(1)(a), at the employer's initiative, because cancelling every future shift and demanding the keys back told him plainly that his services were finished. The decision records that he did not resign - he said he hoped to patch things up and return to work, and was rebuffed. The objection was dismissed on May 25, 2026, and the dispute sent to conciliation.
For HR, the takeaways are unsubtle. Cash pay, no signed contract and a rostering app do not add up to a contractor. An unsigned casual employment contract in someone's inbox can work against you - it signals you treated them as a casual employee. The more you control hours, location, uniform and the demand that the person show up themselves, the more the law sees employment, however the pay is dressed up. And insurances you never required the worker to carry can point the same way.
This was a jurisdictional ruling only. The Commission has not decided the underlying general protections dispute; that now heads to a conciliation conference.
