A collapsed business sale left her jobless - then the Commission ruled on who ended the employment
A worker wound down her job, moved out of her company house, and lined up a role with the buyer of the business. Then the sale collapsed - and she was out of work.
The Fair Work Commission ruled on August 11, 2026 that the administrative employee was not dismissed when her employer's business sale fell through. It found she had resigned through her own conduct, even though she never said the words.
The employer, a Western Australian mine maintenance company, agreed in April 2026 to sell its business assets to another firm. Under the deal, the buyer would offer jobs to the seller's staff, effective on completion, set for June 1, 2026. Those offers were conditional on employees resigning from the seller at completion.
The worker had held an administrative role since around September 2024 and lived in company-provided accommodation. As the transition took shape, she finished work on May 21, was paid through May 24, and prepared to relocate before starting with the buyer. Her expected start date with the buyer was May 27 - before the sale had completed.
On May 25, the buyer told the seller it was pulling out. The deal was off.
Three days later, the worker emailed the company's managing director asking for written clarification of her employment status. She wrote that the buyer "has verbally offered me a role but I have not received a contract," and said she had been due to start on May 27 but understood the transition had not proceeded. The managing director replied that her last shift had passed and that her role had been offered to someone else.
She then applied to the Commission under section 365 of the Fair Work Act, arguing her employment ended at the employer's initiative. The employer objected. It said she had not been dismissed within the meaning of section 386 - she had resigned.
That objection was decisive. A person must have been dismissed to bring a general protections dismissal application under section 365, so the Commission had to settle the resignation question before anything else could proceed.
The test the Commission applied does not turn on what the employee privately intended. It turns on what a reasonable person in the parties' position would have understood from what each said and did. The Commission gave weight to the contemporaneous record - emails and text messages - over later recollections.
The worker's own May 28 email did much of the work. It showed she had already been offered a role by the buyer. Earlier emails referred to moving her belongings and to the buyer supplying equipment so she could work from home "at the end of the month." Texts referred to a contract being drawn up and to a start date "with you guys." The Commission preferred the managing director's evidence, accepting that the worker told him on April 22 she had accepted the buyer's offer and needed to start on May 27.
On those facts, the Commission held it was open to the employer to conclude she had resigned. Her last day was May 21 and her final pay ran to May 24. Before the sale completed, her conduct had shown the employer she had resigned.
The Commission also addressed the "forced resignation" limb of section 386 - constructive dismissal - though the worker had said she was not relying on it. She was not forced out, it found. She could have waited for the sale to close and resigned then. Instead she acted early, before a signed contract with the buyer was in hand, and was left without employment when the deal fell over. The Commission described her as having acted with a sense of urgency and without the caution of making her resignation contingent on the sale actually completing.
The jurisdictional objection was upheld. The application was dismissed. An order to that effect issued with the decision.
For HR teams, the case maps where transition risk sits. During a business sale, staff may start winding down, relocating, or accepting the buyer's offer before completion. If the deal fails, the question of who ended the employment turns on the paper trail - emails, texts, roster changes - not on anyone's stated intention. The practice point is direct: set out the conditions of any transition in writing, and make clear to staff that acting on a buyer's offer before completion can be read as a resignation, whatever they had in mind.
