A worker said his boss froze him out over his age. The records told a different story
A worker in his early 70s cried age discrimination. His employer's paper trail won the day.
A self-represented engineer was certain he had been pushed out of his job because of his age. On June 4, 2026, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia disagreed - and the reasons read like a field guide for any HR team handling casual conversion.
Tadeusz Stec worked as a casual calibration technician at a metering and calibration laboratory run by Utilities Management Pty Ltd, in suburban Adelaide. He started in October 2022, aged 71, on a casual contract paying $46.10 an hour. He had been brought in to temporarily fill the spot of a permanent employee who was away on field work.
For most of his time there, Stec worked close to full-time hours. When his one-year anniversary came around in October 2023, he told his supervisor he wanted to go permanent. According to the judgment, the supervisor responded with words to the effect of, "come on now, what do you mean, aren't you 72 and haven't you already retired once?" Stec read that as proof of bias. The supervisor said it was meant as a joke - he thought Stec was joking too - and that he immediately told the room the business was an equal opportunity employer.
Stec built his entire case on that moment and what followed. He alleged the company refused to make him permanent because of his age, cut his hours to punish him for asking, coerced him into signing a second casual contract, and stacked a later job interview against him. He asked for $174,062.98 in compensation, plus interest and his job back.
The court turned him down on every point.
This is where it gets useful for HR. Australia's casual conversion rules - then sitting in Division 4A of Part 2-2 of the Fair Work Act 2009, and since repealed - did not give Stec an automatic permanent role at the twelve-month mark. An employer can decline to offer conversion when there are reasonable operational grounds, including a genuine, foreseeable drop in the hours a casual will actually be needed. The employer had several: the permanent worker Stec was covering for was coming back, an injured permanent employee needed light duties in the lab, apprentices were rotating through, and the workload was expected to fall.
The judge found those reasons real, not reverse-engineered to dodge the law. The detail HR people will appreciate: an HR adviser spotted the conversion issue early, checked the employer's obligations on the Fair Work Ombudsman website, and set out the lawful options for managers in writing before anyone decided anything. The court called her emails appropriate and professional, even though one told managers to "be careful of adverse action" - phrasing the judge thought a little loose, but honest.
Then there's the reverse onus, which is the real lesson. In general protections cases, once a worker shows adverse action tied to a workplace right, the burden flips: the employer has to prove the genuine reason was not an unlawful one. The company cleared that bar because its managers gave direct, credible evidence backed by contemporaneous records - internal requisitions, emails, and text messages. Stec leaned mostly on suspicion.
The rest fell the same way. On the interview, the panel assessed four candidates against a five-part scoring matrix, and the winning candidate topped it, 33 to Stec's 17, with the judge finding age irrelevant. On coercion, the second contract was a corrected casual template, and the automated e-signature reminders were not pressure. On the age comment, the judge treated it as a clumsy, quickly walked-back remark made in surprise - not bias - noting the same manager had pushed to hire Stec in the first place.
For HR, the practical signals are clear. Build and date the operational case for a conversion decision before you make it. Make sure managers understand that casual conversion is neither automatic nor a punchline. And keep your contemporaneous records tidy, because under the reverse onus, they are what saves you.
The application was dismissed.
