I have about fifty people on payroll across two countries. I have written about that before. So when a Fair Work offshore ruling about a Philippines-based worker started circulating, three people forwarded it to me within a day. Every one of them sent a slightly different version of what it meant, and none of them matched what I found when I went and read it.
Worth saying upfront: one of my businesses supplies offshore staff to Australian companies, so I have skin in this. Read it with that in mind and check the decisions yourself.
Tl; dr;
- There are two decisions, not one. The employer lost both.
- Pascua v Doessel Group [2024] FWC 2669 found Joanna Pascua was an employee, not a contractor, despite a document titled “Independent Contractor’s Agreement”.
- Pascua v Doessel Group [2025] FWC 1833, handed down 27 June 2025 by Deputy President Tony Slevin, found the dismissal harsh, unjust and unreasonable.
- She was awarded $10,800 , which is fifteen weeks’ pay, plus back-payment to Australian minimum wage for the engagement.
- The “she works overseas so the Act doesn’t reach her” argument was raised and then dropped before it was tested. That question is still open, and it is the part most summaries get wrong.
What the Fair Work offshore ruling actually decided
Doessel Group, a Queensland law firm doing credit repair work, engaged a paralegal based in the Philippines. She worked for them for twenty months. In late March 2024 they terminated her by email, alleging she had copied company and client information to a personal drive.
The employer objected on two grounds: that the Fair Work Act didn’t reach a worker sitting in the Philippines, and that she was a contractor anyway. At the hearing they dropped the first argument and ran only the second. The Commission rejected it and found she was an employee. That was the 2024 decision, and it only settled whether she could bring a claim.
The claim itself was decided more than a year later. Deputy President Slevin found the dismissal harsh, unjust and unreasonable. There was no warning and no discussion before she was told she was fired. He also found the stated reason, copying records, was not the real reason. The real reason was performance, and performance issues did not justify dismissal without warning.
The part people still get wrong
Because the employer abandoned the territorial argument, the Commission never had to resolve whether the Act automatically extends to someone working overseas. What the case establishes is narrower. An offshore worker with a direct contractual relationship with an Australian employer, where that employer directs how the work is done, can bring a claim. Anyone telling you this settled the jurisdiction question in general hasn’t read the decisions.
That nuance matters if you are deciding how to structure things. The risk is not that you employ someone in another country. The risk is how you engage them. The same goes for what they produce: a system a staff member builds unprompted needs its ownership settled in writing before it matters. It is the same shape of problem as the one where late lodgement turns a tax debt personal, where the paperwork decides the exposure and not the intention behind it.
Why the contract didn’t save them
The engagement document was titled “Independent Contractor’s Agreement” and then referred to her as both a contractor and an employee in its own text. It described her hourly rate as a salary. A contract that can’t keep its own story straight is not much of a shield.
The Commission worked through the usual indicia: whether the work was done in someone else’s business, whether it could be delegated, whether she ran a business of her own, how much supervision and daily instruction she received, and whether the arrangement was ongoing. It also noted she was paid below the Australian minimum wage.
Every one of those is about how the relationship ran day to day. None of them is about where she sat. You can relabel the document all you like. If you set the hours, supervise the work, and the person can’t send someone else in their place, you have an employee.
What I would check in your own arrangements
- Read your contract out loud. If it calls the person a contractor in the title and an employee in clause nine, it will not help you.
- Look at the rate. Pay below the Australian minimum was explicitly part of the reasoning, and the back-pay order was arguably costlier than the compensation.
- Look at who directs the work. Daily instruction and set hours point one way.
- Ask whether they could send a substitute. If not, that’s an employment indicium.
- Follow a process before you terminate anyone. The second decision turned on no warning, no discussion, and a stated reason that wasn’t the real one.
Summary
The Fair Work offshore ruling isn’t the earthquake some summaries made it sound like, and it isn’t nothing either. Classification follows substance, a sloppy contract documents your own inconsistency, and the territorial question everyone is arguing about was never actually decided. If you engage people offshore directly, the fix isn’t a better jurisdiction to hide in. It is deciding honestly whether you are hiring someone or buying a service, papering it like you mean it, and following a process if it ends.
