His employer turned out to be Australian - but that still wasn't enough to get him a hearing
A worker based overseas asked Australia's Fair Work Commission to hear his dismissal claim - and learned it had no power to.
In a decision handed down on September 4, 2026, the Commission dismissed a general protections claim brought by a worker based in the Philippines, finding that Australia's workplace laws did not reach his job.
The worker was hired in January 2025 as head of offshore delivery for a company that supplies outsourced staff to Australian and overseas businesses, including a large Australian retail group. He signed his contract in the Philippines, worked there in full, and was let go in July 2025 at the end of a 180-day probation after being told he had not met the performance standards for the role.
He then lodged a general protections claim - the part of the Fair Work Act that shields workers from certain kinds of unfair treatment - arguing his dismissal breached it. Over several months he changed his account of who actually employed him more than once, beginning with the outsourcing provider and ending with a group of related Australian companies he said were acting "jointly and in concert." His main point was that the decisions that counted - pay, staffing and day-to-day control - were made in Australia, so Australian law should cover him wherever he sat.
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