In last week's bulletin, we explored the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act) definition of casual employment and casual conversion rights. If you missed it, you can find the article here.

This week, we continue on this theme as we examine the very first ruling to cite the casual conversion provisions from the Fair Work Commission (FWC).

FWC shines light on casual conversion rights

In Baker v Macquarie University (2026), the FWC was required to determine whether a casual teaching academic who had been refused casual conversion by their employer was still a casual within the meaning of the FW Act definition.

The FWC found:

• There was a degree of inability for the employer to elect not to offer work to the employee and for the employee to reject work. The employee was performing the critical role of lecturing for allocated subjects and to decline work in a particular semester would cause significant disruption for the students if the employee had the ability to decide whether to perform lecturing work from week to week. The employer and the employee were able to revisit arrangements after each semester, which the FWC considered pointed towards the employee retaining casual status.
• The teaching work performed by the employee was expected to continue to be available in the future, which pointed to the employee not being a casual.
• The full-time and part-time employees performed the same type of teaching work as the casual performed, although the work of these employees included research, leadership or other services. This reduced the weight of this factor in pointing to non-casual employment.
• There was a regular pattern to the work, albeit only for the temporary period of a semester, even though the timing of lectures and associated work may vary from semester to semester.

The FWC concluded the employment relationship was not characterised by an absence of a firm advance commitment to continuing and indefinite work. The work being performed was required by the employer on an ongoing basis, and the employer was reliant on the employee performing regular and scheduled work than would normally be the case with a casual employee.

The FWC accepted that the work is generally confined to the semester periods, which only run for around half of the calendar year, but this meant the work was potentially more akin to recurring fixed-term periods of part-time employment, rather than genuine casual employment.

The FWC interpreted the FW Act casual conversion provisions as follows:

• If an employer rejected a casual conversion request from an employee and the employee refers the matter to the FWC to resolve the dispute, and the FWC determined the employee was no longer a casual within the meaning of the FW Act, then the FWC could not make an order that the employee remain a casual.
• However, it was still the case that the FWC could only make conversion order if satisfied it would be fair and reasonable to make the order.

The FWC ordered that the employee be treated as a part-time employee. The employer argued that an order converting the employee to part-time employment to perform teaching duties exclusively would be inconsistent with the applicable enterprise agreement. The FWC observed if this was the case then it was inconsistent with the NES casual conversion provisions and therefore would have no effect.

The FWC ordered the employee be treated as a part-time employee working 0.1 FTE hours averaged over a 12-month period, i.e. be guaranteed an average of 3.5 hours of work per week.

Need extra guidance on casual employment and conversion rights?

Head to the Employment Law Handbook’s chapter Casual employment for in-depth advice on your rights and obligations as an employer of casual employees.

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