Employer swore it never fired the driver - Fair Work disagreed
A bus company insisted it never fired its driver. The Fair Work Commission disagreed - and ordered it to pay.
A casual bus driver who lost his shifts after a road accident has won an unfair dismissal claim, in a ruling that should make Australian employers think hard about the line between "no work right now" and "you're dismissed."
In a decision handed down on June 9, 2026, the Fair Work Commission found that North Sydney Bus Charter dismissed Behzad Safari Honyandari - even though the company maintained throughout that it had done no such thing.
Honyandari joined the company in April 2025 to drive charter buses. He was engaged as a casual but settled into a regular shift pattern, largely a school run, and kept it up until December. North Sydney Bus Charter is a large employer: it runs more than 300 drivers, around 80% of them casuals.
On December 4, 2025, his bus collided with another vehicle. When the company learned of the accident, the shifts stopped.
What followed mattered to the outcome. Honyandari kept asking for work. He was on a bridging visa that allowed him to work but barred him from social security, and he was supporting a wife and two children. The decision records that his family relied on charities over Christmas. He phoned the depot, visited in person and even applied for an advertised role. Nothing came.
On December 19 the company handed him a letter explaining that its insurer was reviewing the collision and that it could not secure the coverage it needed for him while the investigation ran. The letter stressed the situation was "not a reflection of Safari's performance or conduct."
Yet the company told the Commission it had never dismissed him. He remained employed, it argued - he simply had to show he could drive safely first. A January driving assessment deemed him not competent. He was offered no training to address it, and still no shifts.
Deputy President Slevin rejected the "still employed" argument. He found Honyandari was a regular casual under the Fair Work Act 2009, that the company had decided to stop offering shifts, and that abandoning the work pattern it had maintained for months amounted to a dismissal on the employer's initiative - regardless of the label.
The procedural shortcomings did the rest. The Commission found no valid reason had been established; the only evidence about the accident was a photo of the damaged bus and the company's claim that Honyandari must have been responsible, which the Commission found insufficient to show fault. He was not properly told he had been dismissed or why. He got no opportunity to respond. There were no discussions to require a support person. And he received no warning about his driving before the work dried up.
The Deputy President was sharpest on the uncertainty. The Commission found the company had decided to stop offering shifts but did not say so clearly, instead leading Honyandari to believe more work was coming. That kept him chasing shifts rather than looking elsewhere and discouraged him from limiting his losses. The decision called the uncertainty and the process followed "particularly harsh."
For HR professionals, one line stands out: the Commission noted the company had a dedicated HR Advisor involved in the steps toward dismissal. It treated that as neutral - but it underlines that an HR presence does not rescue a process that skips fundamentals like notice, reasons and a right of reply.
Reinstatement was ruled out. Honyandari had found other work from April 2026, and the company opposed his return. The Commission ordered compensation instead, settling on 10 weeks' pay after allowing for a quieter school-holiday stretch. That came to $20,525.60 in lost wages, plus a superannuation contribution of $2,463.07, with tax to be deducted.
The lesson is blunt. For a regular casual, quietly switching off the shifts can be a dismissal in the eyes of the Commission. Accidents, insurance reviews and competency concerns may be real, but none of them suspends the duty to run a fair, transparent process - and to tell a worker, plainly, where they stand.
