Employer leaned on the casual contract. The timesheets told a very different story
A casual field technician who worked nearly every weekday for two years has won the right to pursue an unfair dismissal claim, after the Fair Work Commission looked past his contract and at his actual roster.
In a decision handed down in Adelaide on 13 May 2026, Commissioner Rogers dismissed a jurisdictional objection raised by National Workplace Safety Services Pty Ltd (NWSS), which had tried to shut down the unfair dismissal application of former employee Samuel Andriessen before it could even be heard.
The case, Mr Samuel Andriessen v National Workplace Safety Services Pty Ltd, turned on a question that quietly haunts a lot of Australian workplaces: when does a casual employee become regular enough to be protected from unfair dismissal?
Andriessen started as a casual field technician with NWSS on 4 October 2023. He was dismissed on 5 December 2025 and lodged his unfair dismissal application with the Commission on 23 December 2025. NWSS argued he should not even get through the door. Its position was straightforward: he was a casual with no fixed hours and no expectation of ongoing shifts, and so had not served the minimum employment period that unlocks unfair dismissal protections.
The timesheets told a different story.
Between January 2024 and his dismissal, Andriessen worked 99 of 101 Mondays, 100 of 101 Tuesdays, 98 of 101 Wednesdays, 97 of 101 Thursdays and 93 of 101 Fridays. From...
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