By Gaby Grammeno Contributor

The worker was employed in her first job as a solicitor. In her first week, she was required to work through the night till past midday the following day, then after a few hours rest, again till nearly 1am.

On one occasion she was required to work for 14 hours on a Saturday while staying in a hotel room with the senior manager and a female director of the company, then at 1am on the Sunday morning he made her watch an ice hockey movie that had nothing to do with her work.

The Magistrates' Court of Victoria found that the law firm, which has since been deregistered, breached its contract with the solicitor, who worked for the company between 17 February 2022 and 13 March 2022.

The solicitor claimed she’d been required to work more than 38 hours a week for three weeks in February and March 2022, with the additional hours being unreasonable in the circumstances. 

The excessive hours and the way her boss ‘monopolised her time’, requiring constant communication, made it difficult for her to make arrangements for her mother’s return home from hospital after a serious illness, and prevented her from attending her former partner’s funeral on a day for which she’d been given leave.

She claimed that the unreasonable hours had exacerbated a pre-existing medical condition, and also that the employer had failed to pay her on two occasions, failed to keep proper pay, overtime and superannuation records and failed to provide a pay slip as required by the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth).

The case was heard in the Magistrates' Court of Victoria.

 

In court

The solicitor submitted that her employer had contravened provisions of the National Employment Standards, and those relating to maximum weekly hours, compassionate leave, and the method and frequency of payment.

Magistrate Kathryn Fawcett said that ‘…despite the multiple, overwhelmingly unmeritorious applications brought by [the employer], the number of hearings conducted and the number of interlocutory decisions made in the proceeding, [the employer] ultimately failed to engage at all with the substance of [the solicitor’s] complaint’ and at no time articulated a viable defence to her claim.

The Magistrate held that the contraventions were deliberate and had a significant impact on the solicitor.

The unreasonable hours contravention was particularly egregious, she said. Though the contravention had occurred only in three separate weeks, those weeks comprised the entirety of the solicitor’s employment, apart from a period of unpaid personal leave.

‘The sheer number of hours [the solicitor] was required to work are, in my view, self-evidently excessive. The times of the day, night and weekends she was required to work were arbitrary and unusual. ... The requirement that she work excessive hours whilst staying in a hotel room with [the two senior managers of the firm] deprived her of any form of personal autonomy or agency without any rational justification apparent. Whilst performing the additional hours, [her] time was monopolised by [the employer].’

Moreover, she was ‘rarely provided with notice of the hours she would be required to work, and was often not aware what time she would start or how long she would be required to work on any given day’.

The Magistrate said that in all the circumstances, the unreasonable working hours ‘made her working environment so repugnant that it constituted a repudiatory breach of Contract’.

The employer had shown no contrition, taken no corrective action despite the order of the Court requiring it to pay the solicitor and failed to cooperate throughout, unduly lengthening the proceeding.

‘In light of these matters, I conclude that it is necessary to impose significant penalties in order to deter [the employer] from future contraventions of the Act and to give effect to the purpose of general deterrence as to similar conduct by other employers.’

Magistrate Fawcett ordered the employer to pay the solicitor a total of $48,840 – $22,200 for the underpayment (a third of the maximum penalty) and $26,640 for the unreasonable hours (40 per cent of the maximum penalty) – plus $2,385 in interest.

 

What it means for employers

Employers should ensure they comply with the provisions of the Fair Work Act regarding reasonable hours and payment.

 

Read the decision

Readdie v People Shop Pty Ltd (Penalty) [2025] VMC 3 (9 April 2025)