She used their laptop and reported to their managers - but Infosys still wasn’t her employer
A consultant on an Optus project brought an unfair dismissal claim against Infosys - but the Commission found it was never her employer.
The ruling, handed down in Sydney on September 8, 2026, landed on a question that keeps surfacing for HR teams who bring people in through labour hire: when someone sits at your site, uses your laptop and sends timesheets to your manager, who actually employs them?
The worker, a data specialist, was approached by Infosys on LinkedIn in March 2024 for a consultant role on a transformation project the company was running for its client, Optus. From the first conversation, Infosys told her it could not put her on its own books because of her visa, and that she would have to be engaged through a third-party labour hire arrangement.
That arrangement grew complicated. She was first engaged as an independent contractor and supplied up a labour hire chain to Infosys, then signed a full-time employment contract with a different company - one that held the government approval needed to sponsor her skilled-worker visa. Her day-to-day work barely changed. She stayed on the Optus project, used a laptop Infosys gave her, and emailed her weekly timesheets to an Infosys manager to sign off.
She resigned in writing in March 2025. The following month she lodged an unfair dismissal application, naming Infosys. Her argument was that, whatever the contracts said, she...
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