Both earned promotions, managed teams, and even annotated their contracts to fight back
Two employees who spent up to 15 years on rolling fixed-term contracts — earning promotions and managing teams — were denied redundancy pay by the Fair Work Commission.
In a decision handed down on 5 February 2026, Commissioner Tran found that Susan Cox and Soniya Survase were fixed-term, not continuing, employees of The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, a medical research institute.
The ruling turns on a question familiar to many HR professionals: when does a string of consecutive fixed-term contracts start to look like ongoing employment?
Cox was first hired as a Project Manager in January 2010 by a predecessor institute to the Florey. Over the following years, her contract was renewed roughly every 12 months. She climbed the ranks — Project Officer, Clinical Program Manager, Project Management Manager, and finally Associate Project Director. Survase joined the Florey in November 2017 and followed a similar path, also reaching Associate Project Director by September 2022. Both managed and supervised staff across multiple projects.
Then, on 25 November 2024, the Florey told them their "maximum term employment" would end on 31 December 2024 "by reason of effluxion of time" and would not be renewed on the basis of funding.
Both worked within Neuroscience Trials Australia, a Florey subsidiary that runs clinical trials funded entirely from external sources, including government, philanthropy, donations, and commercial/industry contracts.
Cox and Survase pushed back. They lodged disputes with the Fair Work Commission on 17 March 2025, arguing they were continuing employees under the Florey Union Enterprise Agreement 2024 and were owed redundancy payments. The Florey disagreed, maintaining they were fixed-term employees.
The case came down to the enterprise agreement's definition of fixed-term employment: a role with specified start and finish dates, terminable only during probation, for serious or wilful misconduct, or for repeated underperformance. The Commissioner found the most recent engagement letters met that definition. While earlier contracts had included broader termination provisions, later renewal letters made clear the employment was governed by the enterprise agreement and would end unless renewed in writing.
Cox and Survase also argued that their day-to-day work — mostly management and supervision — did not fit the agreement's permitted circumstances for using fixed-term contracts. The Commissioner accepted that their duties were largely managerial. But the agreement limits when fixed-term contracts can be used — it does not change what fixed-term employment actually means under the agreement. And because all of NTA's work was funded from sources external to the Florey, the conditions for using fixed-term contracts were satisfied regardless.
One detail stood out. During their contract renewals, both employees annotated their extension letters, writing that they believed their employment was ongoing and reserving their rights to dispute their employment category.
It was not enough. The Commissioner ruled against them on all counts — they were not continuing employees, not made redundant, and not entitled to redundancy payments.
The Commissioner made one further observation: had Cox and Survase been found to be continuing employees, their terminations would have been redundancies — with continuous service reaching back to 14 January 2010 for Cox and 20 November 2017 for Survase.
The case is Cox v The Florey Institute Of Neuroscience And Mental Health Trading AS The Florey [2026] FWC 335.
