A firm called it ‘work experience’ – the court called it employment
A small accounting firm’s missing records left it unable to challenge a former worker’s unpaid-hours claim – and made the owner personally liable alongside the company.
On July 13, 2026, the Industrial Court of New South Wales found that Jazaa Accountants Pty Ltd broke a series of Fair Work Act obligations – on minimum pay, hours, employee records, pay slips, annual leave and superannuation – during the employment of a former staff member. It also found the firm’s owner and director personally involved in the same breaches.
The worker was a recent accounting graduate who had come to Australia on a graduate visa. Both sides agreed he was a paid employee from June 1, 2023 until he resigned on July 8, 2024. The real fight was over the months before that. The firm called it unpaid “work experience.” The worker said he was doing the job.
The court sided with the worker on that point. It found he had done genuine, revenue-earning work from February 2023 – preparing tax and financial documents for clients – which made him an employee, not a volunteer. A “work experience” label, the court said, does not decide the matter when someone is actually doing the work.
For HR, the sharpest lesson is about records. Because the firm had not kept proper employee records and had not issued pay slips, a reverse onus applied under the Fair Work Act. The burden flipped: the worker did not have to prove his hours; the employer had to disprove them. It could not. The pay slips the firm eventually handed over, more than a year after the worker left, carried errors the owner conceded. So the court accepted the worker’s figure – 3,081.5 hours, paid at less than the minimum wage.
Then came the personal liability. The owner argued the company was the employer. The court found he controlled the worker’s hours, wages, records and pay slips – in practice, every relevant part of the business – and was therefore involved in the breaches. Under the Fair Work Act, that involvement makes him personally liable alongside the firm.
The result was not a clean sweep. The court dismissed the worker’s claim that the firm sought a $15,000 payment toward visa sponsorship, finding the evidence did not support it. It also found a $2,000 payment was a loan rather than wages.
The takeaway for employers is blunt. Good records are not just admin – they are your defence. Fail to keep them, and a court may accept the worker’s version of events. And structuring around a company will not always keep a hands-on owner out of the firing line.
The company and the owner were found jointly liable to compensate the worker. This was a first-instance ruling on liability only. The court directed the parties to file agreed or competing orders within seven days and will hear them separately on the final compensation amount and on any penalties.
