He wasn't told it was an interview and couldn't read the contract
A catering employer's attempt to wipe a redundant worker's severance has fallen flat after the Fair Work Commission found it never actually secured him a new job.
Catering Industries NSW Pty Ltd applied to reduce the worker's seven weeks of redundancy pay to nil. The company argued it had lined up alternative employment for him with the incoming operator at the same aged care facility where he had worked for more than three years. The Commission disagreed - on both counts.
The worker, a 25-year-old First Nations man from the Dunghutti Nation, has an intellectual disability and lives in Port Macquarie with his family. He has significant caring responsibilities, looking after his father, who has mental health challenges, and his grandfather. He originally landed the job through Advanced Personnel Management (APM), an organisation that helps people with a disability find long-term work. APM gave him six months of structured support when he started - introducing him to colleagues, connecting him with an Aboriginal case worker, and giving him time to learn the role.
He worked part-time at Highfields Manor Aged Care Facility as a catering assistant, earning $25.85 an hour. Then Catering Industries lost the contract.
On April 7, 2026, the company emailed staff to say its services at the site were ending on May 5. The letter promised the company would "endeavour to offer" alternative roles and noted that Highfields Manor wanted existing staff to apply directly.
The worker's mother helped him put together a resume. He emailed it to Highfields Manor.
Nobody got back to him.
His mother called to follow up. She was told there was no guarantee he would get a role.
On April 28, he finally received an invitation to a meeting about future employment. He went the next day. What he did not know was that it was a group interview. Nobody offered him the chance to bring a support person - something that mattered given his disability.
In that meeting, he was first offered full-time work, which did not suit his caring responsibilities. He was then offered a four-day-per-week role and agreed in principle - but he could not read the contract, so he took it home. He later met the new head chef, who told him the hours would be 11am to 6pm. That was different from the 8:30am to 3pm he had been told in the meeting.
He decided the new role did not match his previous hours, conditions, or support arrangements, and declined it. When he asked Catering Industries about other options, he was told there was another site at Lake Cathie - but the company was not going to offer him a position there.
His employment ended on May 5, 2026. On May 20, Catering Industries filed its application to reduce his redundancy pay to nil.
The heart of the case turned on a deceptively simple question: did the employer actually "obtain" alternative employment for the worker, or did it just point him toward a recruitment process and hope for the best?
Under established case law - including the Federal Court's decision in FBIS and the Full Bench ruling in Ready Workforce - "obtaining" employment means the employer has to go out and procure a job offer from another employer. Pointing workers to a website or handing over a staff list does not meet that bar.
Catering Industries' actions amounted to giving Highfields Manor a list of staff names and keeping in touch about recruitment progress. The company played no part in the worker's application, his resume, his interview, or his selection. Its own HR manager did not even know what Highfields Manor had discussed or offered until an email arrived on May 8 - three days after the worker's employment had already ended.
That was facilitation, the Commission found. Not procurement.
The Commission then went further. Even if the employer had cleared that hurdle, the alternative role was not acceptable. Highfields Manor had made no reasonable adjustments for the worker's disability during the interview process - no support person was invited, and there was no evidence of any ongoing support equivalent to what APM had provided. The hours appeared to have changed. And Highfields Manor would not recognise his previous service, meaning he stood to lose 30 hours of accrued sick leave, 3.5 years of long service leave, and access to the unfair dismissal protections he would have had to re-earn over a fresh six-month minimum employment period.
The application was dismissed in the Commission's October 13 decision.
For HR teams managing contract transitions - particularly in outsourced sectors like catering, cleaning, and aged care - the practical lesson is plain: encouraging staff to apply with an incoming operator is not the same as "obtaining" employment under the Fair Work Act, and employers who treat the two as interchangeable risk wearing the full redundancy bill.
