Three experts, three different answers - and one employee stuck in the middle for years
A defence manufacturer said its lab worker did two jobs. His union said one. The Fair Work Commission has now settled the question.
The Fair Work Commission has ruled that a laboratory technical assistant at Thales Australia's munitions operation held a single, expanded role rather than two separate jobs, and determined that he should be reclassified to a higher pay level - backdated to the day he first asked for a review.
The decision, handed down on July 28, 2026, turns on a scenario familiar to any human resources or industrial relations team: an employee gradually takes on new work, and no one ever formally changes the job.
The worker, employed at the site since September 2019, answered an internal call in 2020 to help configure the laboratory's information management system - technical work involving databases, SQL queries and troubleshooting. He began in August 2020. But he was never given a separate contract, separate pay or separate hours, and no record was kept of when he was doing the new work as opposed to his original role. He simply did both.
That informality shaped the outcome.
Thales argued the worker held two distinct positions and should be paid separately for each while performing it. The AMWU argued there was only one role, and that the whole of it should sit at a single, higher classification.
The Commission accepted the union's position on that central point. It found the worker "did not hold two distinct and separate positions" and had instead "simply took on additional duties" from August 2020. With no separate contract and no time records - the extra work was performed "as needed" - there was no clear line between two jobs to draw.
The classification exercise itself was difficult, and the decision says so plainly. The Commission likened slotting the worker's skills into the enterprise agreement's classification grid to "fitting a square peg into a round hole." Three experts assessed him and reached three different results. Weighing their competing methods, the Commission said, was "a case of comparing apples with oranges."
The Commission also found the agreement's higher-duties clause was not the right fit for the situation. That clause, it said, was not designed for an employee who takes on new duties on an ongoing basis, acquires new competencies and then seeks reclassification. The more appropriate question was what classification the whole role warranted.
Working through the competency framework, the Commission settled on Manufacturing Level 6 (Technical) - a higher classification than the one the employer had applied, though not as high as the level the union's own assessment had supported. It backdated the reclassification to the first pay period after December 2, 2021, the date the worker lodged his request. The Commission said the dispute should be considered resolved on that basis.
For HR and IR practitioners, the practical signals are clear. When an employee takes on new duties, document the arrangement at the outset - scope, classification, pay and hours. Keep records of what is actually performed. And do not assume a higher-duties clause will cover what is really a permanent expansion of a role. The Commission drew a firm line between temporary higher duties and genuine reclassification, and it was the absence of a formalised arrangement that put the question in dispute at all.
