He worked for an Australian company for years - then hit a wall when he filed
Offshore workers, take note: working for an Australian company does not always put you under Australian workplace law.
That is the takeaway from a Fair Work Commission decision handed down on June 4, 2026, dismissing a general protections claim by a software developer who worked for an Australian company but never set foot in Australia.
John Harris Pe accepted a written job offer in March 2019 to work as a PHP developer. He signed the contract in wet ink in the Philippines, and his employer, Satellite Office Solutions, counter-signed it there. Pe performed all his duties in the Philippines. He was paid in Philippine pesos, his tax was remitted in the Philippines, and statutory contributions went to the Philippine government.
The wrinkle: Pe worked specifically and exclusively for an Australian trading company, Pepperstone Group, under a labour-hire arrangement between Satellite Office and Pepperstone.
According to the decision, Pe's relationship with a Pepperstone manager deteriorated significantly in 2025. He submitted a confidential report about that manager's conduct in September 2025 and was certified unfit for work from that month due to a mental health condition. In January 2026 he sent Pepperstone a formal notification about alleged governance failures. Unsatisfied with the response, in February 2026 he emailed the company saying he accepted the repudiation of his contract and had been constructively dismissed.
He then lodged a general protections application under section 365 of the Fair Work Act, naming Satellite Office, Pepperstone, Pepperstone's Chief of Legal Compliance & Risk Adrian Ryan, and Senior People & Culture Manager Pia Bach.
Pe argued his "true employer" was Pepperstone and that the labour-hire arrangement was a "sham." The respondents countered that he could not apply at all, because he was not an "Australian-based employee."
That single question settled the case. Commissioner Crawford found Satellite Office was conducting a genuine labour-hire business - the kind the Federal Court has called "longstanding and unremarkable" - and rejected the sham argument. Satellite Office ran the performance-review process, required salary adjustments to be signed off by two of its representatives, provided Pe with HR support, and supplied Philippines-based staff to companies around the world.
So Satellite Office, not Pepperstone, was Pe's true employer. And because his contract was formed in the Philippines and his duties were performed there, the exclusion in section 35(3) of the Act applied. Pe was not an Australian-based employee, and the general protections did not reach him.
Crawford added that even if Pepperstone had been the true employer, the contract would still have been formed in the Philippines. The only Australian step was a pre-hire coding assessment, which came before any contract existed.
The application was dismissed.
For HR teams running offshore or labour-hire workforces, the message is plain. Where a contract is formed and where the work is performed can decide whether Australian workplace protections apply at all. The signing location, the currency of pay, where tax is remitted, and the commercial substance of the labour-hire entity all matter. A genuine third-party employer that runs its own HR, payroll, and administration is hard to recast as a sham, even where a host business directs the day-to-day work.
