The employer treated his email as a quit notice. The Commission saw it very differently
An employee's email stepping back from his role wasn't a resignation, the Fair Work Commission ruled - and treating it as one triggered a dismissal.
The decision, handed down on July 2, 2026, is a sharp reminder for employers: an ambiguous message is not a resignation, and acting on it as though it were can backfire.
The case involved Full Bore Drill & Blast Pty Ltd, a Western Australian drilling and blasting business, and its general manager operations, who started with the company in August 2024.
On March 4, 2026, the worker emailed the managing director. He raised concerns about tender timeframes, unclear authority, governance and safety risk, and said he was "withdrawing from the General Manager, MMS role, effective immediately." The role as it stood, he wrote, lacked "the authority or governance support required to be discharged responsibly." Crucially, the same email said he remained open to supporting the business "in a clearly defined and appropriately structured capacity if that can be agreed."
The employer treated the email as a resignation. It removed his system access the next day, and by letter dated March 6, 2026, confirmed his last day of employment was March 4.
The worker said that wasn't what he meant. He was stepping back from the general manager role, he said - not resigning - as a work health and safety step to limit his personal liability as an officer under the Work Health and Safety Act 2020 (WA). He told the company by text that "the wording 'effective immediately' ensures that I am not legally liable," and asked it to confirm in writing whether it was treating his email as a formal resignation, saying the intent had been "misconstrued."
He then applied to the Fair Work Commission under s 365 of the Fair Work Act, which allows a dismissed worker to bring a general protections dispute. The company objected, arguing he had resigned and therefore was never dismissed - so had no standing to apply.
The Commission had to settle that threshold question first. It found the March 4 email did not clearly convey a resignation from employment. Read objectively, it pointed to the employment continuing while the parties negotiated a restructured role. The Commission found the employer acted in error when it treated the email as notice of resignation without clarifying whether the worker actually intended to quit. Its March 6 correspondence was the step that ended the employment - a termination at the employer's initiative under s 386(1)(a) of the Act.
On that basis, the Commission dismissed the company's jurisdictional objection. The finding decided one issue only: that the worker was dismissed and can bring his claim. The underlying general protections dispute has not been decided and will now go to a conference.
The practical lesson for HR is hard to miss. When an employee sends something that reads as pulling back from duties rather than resigning - particularly when they flag safety or governance issues and offer to keep contributing - assuming a resignation is a trap. Where the message is ambiguous, the safer course is to ask the employee what they intend before acting. Get it wrong, and an assumed resignation can be recast as an employer-led dismissal, reopening the very risk the employer thought it had avoided.
