No shifts felt like a sacking - but one contract clause decided this casual's fate
A casual worker said he was fired. TheFair Work Commissionread his contract and disagreed.
When the kill numbers fell at aCowraslaughterhouse, the shifts dried up. To casual meat process worker Will Hibbet, that silence felt like a sacking.
Sohe took his former employer,CowraMeat Processors, to the Fair Work Commission. He argued, under the generalprotectionsregime, that he had been dismissed - and that it was tied to a complaint he raised about overtime pay at a toolbox meeting on August 25, 2025.
But the Commission never reached the overtime question. In adecisionhanded down on June 9, 2026, Deputy President Boyce zeroed in on a threshold issue: wasHibbetdismissed at all?
It matters because of how the law is built. Under section 365 of the Fair Work Act, you can only bring a general protections dismissal claim if you wereactually dismissed. No dismissal, nojurisdiction- the Commission simply cannot hear the case.
The answer lived in the contract.Hibbetwasa casual, and his agreement said his hours were not guaranteed and that there was no guarantee of ongoing regular work. Each shift was treated as a separate engagement that ended when the shift did. On that wording, the employer had no duty to keep offering work. So not offering it was neither a breach nor a termination.
The employer's evidence, which the Commission accepted, was that a genuine downturn - driven by lower daily kill numbers - left less work for casuals. Two other casuals got the same message.Hibbetwas not singled out. And he stayed active in the company's HR system rather than being switched to non-active, which would havesignalledthe end of his employment.
Timinghelpedtoo. The gap between being told there was no work, on August 27, 2025, and filing his claim on September 17, 2025, ran about three weeks - hardly a long period of time, the decision said. A long dry spell can sometimes hint at a dismissal. Three weeks did not.
For HR leaders, the lessons are concrete. Casual status rides on the contract and the real substance of the relationship under section 15A, and a regular pattern of work does not, on its own, turn a casual into a permanent or create a right to ongoing shifts.
Write casual contracts that say what they mean: no guaranteed hours, each shift its own engagement. Document the operational reasons when work slows. And mind your systems - keepingsomeone active rather than formally ending their employment can carry real weight if a claim arrives.
The Commission dismissed the application.
