No sacking letter, no meeting, profile still active - yet the Commission found a dismissal
Pull a regular casual off the roster completely, and you may have ended their job - even if no one ever said so.
A Fair Work Commission Full Bench decided as much in Sydney on August 28, 2026, finding by majority that a casual chef was dismissed on the day his employer told him there were no more shifts. The decision overturned an earlier ruling that had shut his case down before it could be heard.
The chef had cooked at two pubs run by the Marlow Group since August 2024, working a settled pattern of five to five-and-a-half-hour shifts each Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. He had no written contract. On November 14, 2025, the head chef texted him that he had been “asked to cut my casual labour due to down turn in business” and had nothing for him “at the time.” Asked whether he might keep Wednesdays and Thursdays, the head chef said there was nothing on those days either, but that he would call “if I have availability come up.” The chef was taken off every shift in the roster through December 7, 2025.
He lodged an unfair dismissal claim on November 24, 2025. The employer pushed back, arguing there had been no dismissal at all: his profile was still active on its rostering system and he remained eligible for work. A Deputy President accepted that. In a decision dated March 27, 2026, he reasoned that the chef’s hours, shift count and locations were not written into any contract, so the texts could not be a dismissal - and without a dismissal, the Commission had no power to hear the case.
On appeal, a majority of the Full Bench said the first ruling had asked the wrong question. Whether the hours were contractual would have mattered only if the chef claimed he had been forced to resign. He made no such claim. The proper test, the majority said, was a practical one: would a reasonable person in the parties’ position have understood the employer’s conduct as bringing the job to an end?
Applying that test, the majority found the chef had been dismissed, while acknowledging the call was “reasonably finely balanced.” He had worked regular hours with little change for well over a year, then lost all of it in a single message, with no assurance about whether or when the work would return. The possibility of future shifts did not change that. Nor did the employer’s early-December approach about availability - that came only after the claim had been filed and served, so it did not change what had already happened on November 14.
One member of the bench dissented. He would have let the original decision stand, weighing the “at the time” phrasing, the approaching Christmas trade, the profile the employer left active, and a written dismissal procedure it never set in motion. On his reading, a reasonable person would not have taken the texts as the end of the job.
For HR teams that run heavily casual rosters, the boundary is worth marking. The majority was explicit that publishing a roster does not lock in a right to those shifts, and that ordinary changes to casual hours are not a dismissal. What carried this case was the abrupt, total end of a long, regular pattern, framed as the result of a decision to cut casual labour, with no stated limit. Leaving a profile active, keeping a dismissal policy on file, and circling back weeks later did not undo a dismissal the majority found had already happened.
The Commission did not decide whether the dismissal was unfair or unlawful. It found only that a dismissal occurred, which gives it the power to hear the case. That claim now returns to a Deputy President to decide.
