Employers should be mindful that the nature of casual employment does not necessarily mean that a casual employee can be terminated without notice that the employment relationship has ended.
Employers should be mindful that the nature of casual employment does not necessarily mean that a casual employee can be terminated without notice that the employment relationship has ended.
A recent decision of the Fair Work Commission (FWC) has come as a reminder that the decision to stop rostering a casual employee, or the act of “offboarding” a casual, may not end the employment relationship unless it is communicated to the employee.
In Burton v SSAA Pty Ltd (St Marys Indoor Shooting Centre) [2026] FWC 560, the FWC was required to consider the date on which a casual employee was dismissed from his employment and whether he had filed his unfair dismissal application out of time.
In or around April 2022, the employee commenced employment with St Marys Indoor Shooting Centre (the Employer) in the position of casual Customer Service Offer/Range Officer.
There was no dispute that the employee was a “regular casual employee”. His employment involved regularly working 5-6 days per weeks, often for shifts of more than 10 hours.
After the Employer rejected the employee’s request for conversion from casual to full-time employment, the employee was moved to different casual roles throughout the business.
On 27 November 2024, the employee worked what would become his last shift with the Employer. The next day, the employee attended work as usual only to discover that he had been removed from the roster entirely. The manager informed the employee that he would eventually be rostered for “other stuff”.
The Employer told the FWC that at an unknown date after this, it made the decision to not roster the employee for any more shifts, however this was not communicated to the employee at that time.
Between the period of November 2024 to October 2025, there was ongoing communications between the employee and the Employer by way of general staff communications and direct exchanges between the employee and Human Resources regarding the possibility of future shifts. During this period, the employee retained access to his staff locker where he stored firearms and other possessions, and he also occupied a rental property owned by the Employer.
In July 2025, the employee’s access to the Employment Hero, the Employer’s rostering system, was removed.
In October 2025, the Employer gave the employee notice to vacate his rental property. Soon after this, on 21 October 2025, the Employer sent the employee an email advising him to empty his staff locker on the basis that his “employment had ceased”.
The employee subsequently filed two separate applications in the FWC however later withdrew those applications as they had been filed incorrectly. Eventually, on 2 December 2025, the employee filed an unfair dismissal application with the FWC.
The Employer jurisdictionally objected to the application on two grounds – firstly, that the employee was not dismissed and secondly, that the employee’s application was filed outside the 21-day timeframe for making an unfair dismissal application.
At the jurisdictional hearing of the matter, the Employer submitted that the employee had not been dismissed and instead, his casual employment simply came to an end after his last shift on 27 November 2024.
The FWC disagreed, finding that the Employer had dismissed the employee by way of the email sent on 21 October 2025, almost 11 months after his last rostered shift, as this was the first and only clear communication by the Employer that the employment had indeed ended.
While the Employer stopped offering the employee shifts in November 2024, this position was not communicated to the employee at that time and the Employer “dangled” the prospect of future shifts in front of the employee for almost nine months. Further, while the employee was officially “offboarded” in July 2025, the Employer still did not notify the employee that his employment had ended.
Turning to the second jurisdictional objection, the FWC found that there were exceptional circumstances that warranted an extension of time. Those exceptional circumstances were:
- while the employee was notified of his dismissal on 27 October 2025, for at least 11 months prior to that, he was led to believe that he was still employed by the Employer despite not being offered any shifts;
- the employee responded to the 27 October 2025 email with notification that he disputed the dismissal and would be seeking an unfair dismissal remedy in the FWC;
- while the employee filed his application 42 days after the dismissal, this was not for a lack of trying, with the FWC finding that the delay was in part due to his difficult living circumstances and the fact that the employee had filed and then withdrew two other applications that were lodged incorrectly; and
- the employee’s unfair dismissal application was “arguably a strong one”, with the employee alleging that he was unlawfully dismissed from his employment because of his request for casual conversion and complaints about his employment.
Accordingly, the FWC made an order granting an extension of time so that the employee could pursue his unfair dismissal application.
Lessons for employers
Employers should take care when exiting regular casual employees from its workforce.
As seen in this decision, employers must provide regular casual employees with notification that the employment relationship has ended. Employers cannot simply deem the employment relationship to have ended after the casuals last rostered shift, nor can they offboard the casual from its systems, without such notification.
A failure to provide a regular casual employee with notification of termination, together with the other procedural fairness principles that ordinarily apply to permanent employees, may expose the employer to a potential unfair dismissal claim as seen in this decision.
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