An analyst programmer who argued his employer did not properly consider redeploying him before making his job redundant has failed to persuade a Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission to hear his appeal, after a deputy president earlier found his dismissal was a genuine redundancy.
What the Commission decided
Mr Lingyun Gao worked as an Analyst Programmer at Allianz Technology SE before his position was made redundant as part of a push to move certain functions to an offshore outsourced model. A deputy president had earlier dismissed his unfair dismissal application, finding that Allianz no longer needed his job done by anyone because of changes to its operations, that Allianz had properly consulted under its enterprise agreement, and that Mr Gao had not shown he could reasonably have been moved into another role.
Mr Gao raised eight grounds of appeal, all directed at how the deputy president had assessed whether he could have been redeployed elsewhere in the business. The Full Bench worked through each one and found none of them disclosed an arguable error.
On the central complaint, that the deputy president wrongly blamed Mr Gao for not naming specific vacant roles, the Full Bench found the deputy president had properly weighed the steps Allianz took to look for alternative positions and had simply noted that Mr Gao gave no evidence pointing to jobs he could have filled. A related complaint, that the deputy president treated a company witness's opinion about Mr Gao's suitability for certain roles as if Allianz had assessed those roles during the actual redundancy process, was also rejected; the Full Bench found the deputy president was entitled to consider that evidence when deciding the redeployment question.
Other grounds argued that Allianz should have run a skills assessment, that the evidence about vacancies was incomplete, and that the deputy president wrongly assumed an internal careers website listed every open role. The Full Bench found the deputy president had considered the skills assessment issue and reasonably concluded it was not needed, given Mr Gao had not provided a CV or named any vacancy he wanted. It found no unsupported assumptions about vacancies and said clear findings had been made about what redeployment steps Allianz actually took.
Overall, the Full Bench held that none of Mr Gao's grounds raised an arguable case of error, let alone a significant error of fact.
What was actually in dispute
Mr Gao argued the case raised a broader question worth settling: the difference between evidence of redeployment steps a company genuinely carried out, and evidence given later in a hearing about whether a worker might have suited a role. He also pointed to the scale of Allianz's offshoring programme, which was cutting the size of its Australian workforce, as a reason the issue mattered beyond his own case.
The Full Bench was not persuaded. It found the appeal did not raise the kind of issue of general importance, or expose any injustice, that would make it in the public interest to grant permission to appeal. Because an appeal from this type of decision can only proceed with the Commission's permission, and that permission turns on the public interest, the refusal brought the matter to an end.
What this means
The decision turned entirely on how a redundancy case is assessed once an employer says a role is no longer needed and points to steps it took to look at redeployment. The underlying principles about when a redundancy is genuine, and what counts as reasonable redeployment, are covered in more detail at /unfair-dismissal/redundancy/. The case is also a reminder of how narrow the path is for appealing a Commission decision, a topic explored at /fair-work-commission-process/.