He’d handed over a medical certificate - the salon emailed a dormant address instead
A Sydney hair salon fired a stylist for “abandoning” his job while he was on certified sick leave - then lost the unfair dismissal case.
The Fair Work Commission handed down its decision on August 25, 2026. It found the salon, a franchisee in a national hairdressing chain, had unfairly dismissed the worker in September 2025. The employer had treated his extended medical absence as abandonment of employment and ended his job by email. At the hearing, it conceded he had in fact supplied a medical certificate covering the absence. That concession settled it: with no abandonment, there was no valid reason to dismiss.
The Commission found the dismissal harsh, unjust and unreasonable - the test for unfair dismissal under the Fair Work Act. The worker, an Italian national whose visa and right to remain in Australia depended on the salon sponsoring him, had been off work since mid-August 2025. A medical certificate described a major depressive episode with associated anxiety, and a certificate of capacity said he had no capacity for any work through late September.
One point drew close attention. The owner, who was also the salon’s sole director, sent her follow-up and termination emails to a Hotmail address the worker said had been dormant for some time - even though the two had been using their work email addresses for sensitive matters, including disciplinary letters, only weeks earlier. The Commission found it “seems likely” she used the old address “because she was hoping the Applicant would not respond,” which she may have believed would give the salon grounds to treat the job as abandoned. The Commission found it did not.
The salon opened its defence by claiming small-business status under the Small Business Fair Dismissal Code. It later conceded it did not qualify as a small business under the Act, because it was linked to the larger franchise company. The Commission still treated it as small in the everyday sense - six staff, with the owner personally running hiring, performance management, discipline and terminations. There was, it found, “an absence of dedicated human resource management specialists or expertise,” and that contributed to the poor process. It did not accept that as an excuse for it.
The compensation is where the case turns. A finding of unfair dismissal did not translate into a large payout. The Commission ruled out giving the worker his job back - he had since found work in Canberra, and the relationship had broken down - and moved to compensation. It found that even if the dismissal had never happened, he most likely would not have returned to the salon. He was medically unfit to work until he began a new role in January 2026, his paid personal leave would have run out, and unpaid leave would have followed. On that basis, it valued his likely lost pay at about 42 hours of personal leave and nothing more.
The order came to $1,415.25. The Commission declined to add anything for distress or humiliation, which the compensation calculation does not allow, and noted that the salon was in a small business restructuring process and trading at a loss.
For HR professionals, the lessons are plain. Abandonment of employment is a narrow concept, and treating a certified medical absence as abandonment is a quick path to an unfair dismissal finding. Sending decisive correspondence to an address an employee clearly is not using invites the exact inference the Commission drew here. And handling discipline and dismissals without dedicated HR support does not lower the standard of fairness expected - the Commission said as much.
The size of the award sends its own message. In unfair dismissal, the payout depends heavily on what would likely have happened anyway. Where an employee probably would not have returned - here, on medical grounds - even a clear loss for the employer can end in a modest sum. It is no reason to cut corners, since the unfair dismissal finding sits on the public record. But it shows how much weight the question of how long someone would really have stayed carries once the money is worked out.
The Commission said it would issue the compensation order separately, within 21 days of the decision.
