Vows of obedience, a weekly stipend, JobKeeper - but the commission still found no employment
Can a priest be unfairly dismissed by his own religious order? A South Australian ruling says no - and the reasoning should interest anyone who manages non-standard workers.
On August 7, 2026, the Fair Work Commission dismissed an unfair dismissal claim brought by a Catholic priest against the religious order he had served for more than two decades, finding he had never been an employee to begin with.
The priest was sent from Poland in 1999 to minister to Polish Catholic communities, moving between cities in Australia and New Zealand over the years. In January 2020, his order reassigned him to Adelaide. The next year, it suspended him, relieved him of his Adelaide duties and directed him to relocate - first interstate, then back to Poland. He didn't go. He lost the use of a community car and the home he had been living in, and his weekly allowance stopped. In September 2024, the order expelled him. He then filed for unfair dismissal.
The order raised two jurisdictional objections. The Commission accepted both.
The first is the one HR should sit with: the priest was not an employee at all. The Commission ran through the familiar tests - control, pay, leave, tools of trade, and whether the parties ever intended to enter a legally binding contract.
The relationship failed at that last, threshold question. The priest had joined the order by taking lifelong vows of chastity, poverty...
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