She was the team's best. Then she said no to an IFA - and the warnings started
A widowed single mother who was the highest-paid and one of the best-performing members of her team has won a workplace rights case against payments company Tyro, after a court found she was stripped of her preferred shifts, handed two disciplinary warnings, and ultimately fired - all because she refused to sign a deal that would have cut her pay and then complained about it.
The Federal Circuit and Family Court handed down its liability decision on October 12, finding Tyro Payments contravened the Fair Work Act multiple times. The worker's direct manager was also found personally liable for his involvement.
The worker had been with Tyro since 2011 as a customer support agent. Her husband died in 2016, leaving her as the sole carer of a young daughter with no relatives in Australia. She moved to overnight shifts, which let her manage school drop-offs during the day. By 2019, she was the highest-paid member of the customer support team - a reflection, the court accepted, of years of strong and consistent performance.
Then came the changes.
In late 2019, Tyro restructured its customer support roster ahead of an ASX listing. The worker was allocated to a permanent night shift - a move that, under her existing contract, would have lifted her annual earnings to roughly $92,400 with a 40% night loading. But Tyro had other plans. New standardised contracts issued in October 2019 removed the shift loading clauses, replacing them with a flat salary of $73,242 including superannuation - less than the worker had earned the previous financial year.
The court described the process as having a "decided quality of 'bait and switch.'"
Her manager pressed her to sign the new contract before the IPO, telling her it would "cause a problem" for her and the company if she did not. She signed reluctantly in late November 2019. Tyro continued to pay the 40% loading on an interim basis.
In February 2020, Tyro offered the worker an individual flexibility arrangement - a mechanism under the Fair Work Act that allows an employer and employee to agree to vary certain award conditions. The IFA set her salary at $78,234 exclusive of superannuation. That was still below what she had been earning on the night shift. She did not sign.
What followed was a cascade. On March 20, HR emailed the worker: sign the IFA by March 22, or move to the day shift from April 1. She refused. She was moved off the night shift on April 14 - the shift she had chosen specifically because it let her care for her daughter.
A formal warning followed on April 15, ostensibly for failing to notify sick leave by phone. The court found that requirement was not enforced in practice - the worker's own team leader had never raised it as an issue, and other employees routinely notified absences by instant message without complaint.
The worker's complaints mounted. Between March and June 2020, she sent dozens of emails to managers, HR, and the CEO, challenging the contract process, the shift change, and the warning. Tyro issued a final warning on June 2, citing the volume and tone of her correspondence. The court found the final warning was itself, on its face, "a response to the applicant's exercises of her workplace rights."
On June 30, she was dismissed. The stated reasons centred on her handling of two customer calls on June 23.
The court did not accept those reasons.
On the first call, a customer at a medical practice had been unable to process transactions for three business days. The worker contacted a colleague who had been handling the case, asking him to take it back. Her manager later claimed this escalation was unnecessary and that the worker had been "rude and disrespectful" on the call. The court listened to the recording. The judge found he could not accept the manager "genuinely held that view." He described the complaint about the escalation as conduct that "seems perverse," noting other staff had done exactly the same thing on the same case without criticism.
The manager also claimed the worker lied to the customer by promising a callback from the colleague. Internal records showed the colleague had responded "no worries" when asked to return the call. The court found the manager did not give a "satisfactory explanation" of how he could have concluded the worker had lied, given those records.
On the second call, the worker transferred a customer at 5:02 pm because her shift had ended and she needed to collect her daughter from school - a practice Tyro had tolerated for years. When pressed on whether he understood the worker needed to leave for her child, the manager said: "I could not conclude that." The court described that response as "obtuse," noting the same manager had, just days earlier, adjusted a meeting time "to ensure that you have time to do school runs etc."
The court found the reasons in the dismissal letter were "confected, or at least significantly exaggerated" to justify the termination, and that the real reasons included the worker's persistent complaints about her manager's conduct.
Across the shift changes, both warning letters, and the dismissal, the court declared Tyro had taken adverse action against the worker because she exercised workplace rights and because she declined to sign the IFA - both protected under the Fair Work Act. The manager was found to have been "knowingly concerned" in every one of those contraventions and was held personally liable. Under section 550 of the Act, a person involved in a breach is treated as having committed the breach themselves - meaning penalties and consequences can fall directly on the individual, not just the company.
Not all of the worker's claims succeeded. The court rejected allegations that Tyro coerced her into signing the IFA or exercised undue influence. It also found the IFA met the legal "better off overall" test when measured against award minimums, even though it left the worker worse off than her previous earnings. Her claim of discrimination based on family or carer's responsibilities also failed.
The matter is now listed for a directions hearing on November 20, 2026, to determine remedies.
For HR teams managing IFA rollouts or contract restructures, the case is a sharp reminder that the paper trail cuts both ways - and that a manager who becomes the target of an employee's complaints cannot be the one who disciplines and dismisses them without reasons that hold up under scrutiny.
This decision concerns liability only. Remedies, which may include compensation and penalties, are yet to be determined. Tyro's position on the findings is not known. No appeal has been reported at the time of publication.
