A sign-here form promised to cut three allowances. The Commission had other ideas
A sign-here form can't undo what an enterprise agreement promises. GrainCorp learned that at the Fair Work Commission.
In a decision handed down on May 22, 2026, the Fair Work Commission told grain handler GrainCorp it cannot use a consent form to switch off travel allowances its workers are owed.
The case pitted the Australian Workers' Union against GrainCorp Operations Limited, a company that ran more than 150 regional sites and, at the time it lodged the agreement, employed 1,885 casuals. At the centre were "outload casuals" - grain handlers hired outside the October-to-January harvest season who load and unload trucks and trains, clean, and handle maintenance.
The trouble was the travel. Outload casuals can be required to move between sites - to cover absences, use their skills where they are needed, train, or handle emergencies. GrainCorp also offers extra shifts at other sites when a usual workplace is closed, for example for fumigation, and a casual can accept or decline those. One outload casual gave evidence that in a single week he drove between four sites in his own car, covering 233 kilometres on the Monday alone. He was paid a per-kilometre rate, he said, but nothing for his travel time.
The union asked the Commission to sort out who pays. The answer turned on an "undertaking," a written promise GrainCorp gave the Commission to get its 2024 enterprise agreement approved. That promise extended some travel allowances to casuals for the first time.
Deputy President Grayson split the result three ways.
On mileage - 120 cents per kilometre for using your own vehicle, under clause 21.4 - the union lost. The undertaking said the meal, accommodation and travel-time clauses "will apply," but never mentioned mileage. Grayson read that silence as deliberate. Interpreting an agreement, she wrote, is not about rewriting it to land on a fairer result; the task is "to consider the ordinary meaning of the words, having regard to the purpose and context of the provision."
On the two larger questions, though, the employer came up short.
GrainCorp argued that because each casual shift is offered and accepted separately, a worker who takes a distant shift chose to travel and so wasn't "required" to. Grayson disagreed. Accepting a shift, she found, doesn't wipe out the travel entitlements, because the company still needs the work done and needs the worker there to do it. A distant shift, she wrote, "is not offered out of the goodness of GrainCorp's corporate heart. Work is required to be performed there, and outload casuals are required to perform it."
Then came the form. In March 2025, GrainCorp introduced an "Employee Acceptance for Outload Casual Engagement" document. Signing it meant acknowledging that clauses 21.1, 21.2 and 21.3 "will not apply." Grayson found the form couldn't carry that weight. It did not remove or void the company's duty to pay.
For HR leaders, the lessons land fast.
Recasting required work as a voluntary choice won't dissolve an entitlement. If your enterprise agreement grants something when staff travel for work, dressing the travel up as optional doesn't make the obligation vanish.
A form can't override an industrial instrument. A contract or acknowledgement can add to an enterprise agreement, but it can't strip out what the agreement gives. The decision reads as a plain warning against treating consent forms as a workaround.
And precision in drafting matters. GrainCorp won on mileage only because clause 21.4 was never named in the undertaking, while clauses 21.1, 21.2 and 21.3 were. The Commission read that omission as deliberate.
Casual status, finally, is not a shield. The Commission drew on earlier rulings about on-call rosters to find that signing up voluntarily doesn't mean a worker isn't "required" to do what the arrangement demands.
