The department bungled the communication, but the law had already ended her employment years earlier
An employee vanished for eight years without approved leave—but when her unfair dismissal claim reached Fair Work, she learned she'd been gone too long.
The Fair Work Commission ruled last week that Veronica Stark's employment with the Victorian Department of Education ended automatically in 2017, not in 2025 when the department finally told her she was no longer on staff. The November 24 decision underscores a trap many HR teams fall into: confusing termination by the employer with termination by statute.
Stark had been on approved leave without pay from March 2013 until February 2017. When that leave ended, she simply didn't come back. From February 28, 2017, she was absent without any authorization. The department flagged her status in the payroll system with a "Stop Pay" entry that ran until February 2025, then extended it to December 2030.
Nothing changed until February this year, when Stark sent an email asking why she'd been placed on unpaid leave through 2030. Her inquiry set off a flurry of letters from Werribee Secondary College, where she'd previously been deployed.
That's when things went sideways. The school principal wrote to Stark in May, citing the Education and Training Reform Act but telling her the employment would end "at your own initiative" three days after the letter. Days later, the acting principal sent another letter saying her job had ceased under the statute, but gave the wrong date: May 14, 2025.
Neither letter got it right. Under section 2.4.34 of the state education act, an ongoing employee who is absent for three months without approved leave automatically ceases to be an employee. No dismissal letter required. No termination meeting. No employer decision at all. The law does the work.
Deputy President Millhouse found Stark had been absent without leave starting February 28, 2017. Three months later, on May 28, 2017, her employment ended by operation of law. It happened whether anyone noticed or not.
That distinction proved fatal to Stark's case. The Fair Work Act allows unfair dismissal claims only when someone has been dismissed. Automatic cessation under statute doesn't count as dismissal, even if it feels the same to the employee. The commission noted it had reached the same conclusion on similar facts in other Victorian education cases.
The ruling exposes a common gap in HR knowledge. Many professionals understand how to terminate employment but miss the scenarios where employment simply ends on its own. State and federal laws contain numerous automatic cessation triggers, and the consequences of missing them can linger for years.
For the department, the confusion was mostly embarrassing. The employment had ended eight years earlier, making the 2025 letters legally meaningless. But the episode illustrates how poor record-keeping and communication can turn a straightforward statutory matter into protracted confusion.
The takeaway for HR teams is straightforward: know when the law terminates employment automatically, track those triggering events carefully, and communicate the status clearly when it happens. Waiting eight years to tell someone they're no longer employed is not best practice, even if the law did the heavy lifting.
