AI tools are supercharging employee claims, exposing workplace compliance gaps, and forcing employers to rethink how they manage legal risk
AI has redrawn the battlelines of Australian employment law. Workers across the country now have access to powerful tools capable of stress-testing payslips, scrutinising grievance processes, and filing tribunal claims at a speed that has left employers scrambling – and the nation's workplace umpire overwhelmed.
The Fair Work Commission (FWC) is on track to record a 70% increase in total workload over just three years by the end of the 2025–26 financial year, with generative AI tools identified as a principal driver of that surge.
From roughly 30,000 matters per year prior to 2023, the FWC's caseload jumped to 45,000 in 2024–25 and is expected to exceed 50,000 in the current financial year. Unfair dismissal claims have grown 41% between 2022–23 and 2024–25, with even greater growth recorded across general protections claims.
For Brittany Byrne, partner and solicitor at Citation Legal, the shift has been both sudden and profound.
"We thought Covid was groundbreaking and it was in our space," Byrne said. "I think we're the only area of law that really thrived during those two years post-Covid and through Covid. And now we are somehow in a very different but equally as impactful period of AI. The reality is that it's honestly hit within the last two to three months."
The practical effect of AI on employment...
Exclusive: An online business based in Sydney will be taken to court after it allegedly made false claims it had connections to the victims of the Bondi terror attack. Bondi United, a website that...