A single 'renewable' clause put the whole dismissal question in play
One word in a contract - "renewable" - decided a recent unfair dismissal case before it ever reached a hearing.
A facilities manager at S P Jain School of Global Management asked the Fair Work Commission to hear his unfair dismissal claim, saying he was dismissed on December 31, 2025. The employer challenged the claim before it could get to a hearing. Its argument was blunt: no one dismissed him. His one-year fixed-term contract had reached its end date, and the job ended with it.
On June 30, 2026, the Commission agreed. It upheld the employer's jurisdictional objection - a challenge to whether the Commission could hear the case at all - and dismissed the application.
For HR, the lesson sits in how much weight the contract's wording had to carry.
The worker's 2025 contract set the term as "1 Year (Renewable on a yearly basis)," with an end date of December 31, 2025. He argued that "renewable on a yearly basis" meant the contract could be renewed more than once. Under the fixed-term contract limits added to the Fair Work Act in December 2023, a contract that can be renewed more than once can breach the rules - and where it does, the end date can be treated as having no effect. On that reading, expiry alone could not end his job.
He had a second argument. The contract let either side end the employment on notice. A contract with a broad right to terminate on notice, he said, is not truly for a fixed period....
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