The centre promised a severance payout it never made, then posted the role four days earlier
An Australian childcare operator dismissed an educator as redundant, never paid the severance it promised, then advertised her role weeks later.
The Fair Work Commission was not persuaded. In a decision issued on August 3, 2026, it found the redundancy was not genuine and the dismissal was harsh, unjust and unreasonable.
The case, brought against The Little Unicorn On Honeysuckle Pty Ltd, is a clean study in how a redundancy comes apart when an employer skips the basics. For HR leaders, it rewards a close read.
The educator had worked at the centre since February 2025 as a part-time nursery support educator, averaging 22.3 hours a week. On March 5, 2026, she was called in without notice to a meeting in a storage cupboard and told her job was being made redundant. Few details were given.
A termination letter followed the next day. It described her position as "superfluous to our operational needs" after a review of "operational needs and ongoing financial viability," and ended her employment immediately. It also promised a "severance package including redundancy and termination renumerations" in the "next pay run."
According to the decision, that payment never arrived. She received no redundancy payment and no payment in lieu of notice, and was not paid wages for the last three days she worked.
Then the employer's position unravelled. On June 13, 2026, the educator saw a job advertisement the centre had posted - four days earlier - for a role similar to the one she had lost.
The Commission found the employer had produced no evidence that its operational needs had actually changed, or that the job was no longer needed. The employer did not file a response, did not appear at the hearing, and took little part in the proceedings.
The reasoning is a useful refresher for anyone who runs redundancies. Under section 389 of the Fair Work Act, a redundancy is genuine only when the employer no longer needs the job done by anyone because of operational change, and only when the employer has met any consultation duty set by the relevant award.
Here, the Children's Services Award 2010 applied. Its clause 8 required the employer to give affected staff written information about the change and to discuss ways to soften its impact. The Commission found neither the storage-cupboard meeting nor the letter came close to meeting those requirements.
Redeployment was the final point. On the evidence before it, the Commission was not satisfied that redeploying the educator would have been unreasonable. Some work was available at a related centre - but the offer of shifts there came three days after she had already been dismissed.
With no valid reason, no genuine redundancy and no proper consultation, the dismissal failed. Reinstatement was ruled out because the educator had lost trust and confidence in the employer. Applying the established Sprigg method for calculating loss, the Commission ordered compensation of $6,805.43, made up of $6,076.28 plus $729.15 superannuation.
The takeaway for HR is straightforward. A redundancy has to be real, evidenced and properly consulted. Attach the label without the operational case behind it - and then advertise the same job weeks later - and the Commission will see through it.
