Doessel Group, the Queensland business behind MyCRA Lawyers, found this out the hard way. It ended in a $10,800 compensation order and a Full Bench decision that offshore employers are still absorbing.
In September 2024, the Fair Work Commission ruled on Pascua v Doessel Group Pty Ltd [2024] FWC 2669. Joanna Pascua worked as a paralegal for MyCRA Lawyers from her home in the Philippines. Her paperwork called her an independent contractor. Deputy President Slevin looked past the paperwork and found she was an employee, with every protection the Fair Work Act gives one.
Doessel Group appealed. The Full Bench upheld the finding in Doessel Group Pty Ltd v Pascua [2025] FWCFB 43. Then in June 2025, in Pascua v Doessel Group Pty Ltd [2025] FWC 1833, Slevin found Pascua had been unfairly dismissed and ordered Doessel Group to pay her $10,800, fifteen weeks’ pay, since reinstatement wasn’t practical.
If your business runs offshore teams under contractor agreements, this case is worth ten minutes of your time.
What Actually Happened
Pascua was paid AUD $18 an hour, well below the award rate for paralegal work. She worked Australian business hours. The firm gave her a phone system built to make her calls look like they were coming from inside Australia, and a MyCRA Lawyers email signature to match.
Her contract was titled “Independent Contractor Agreement.” When the firm ended the arrangement by email in March 2024, she filed for unfair dismissal. The firm argued she couldn’t be dismissed because she was never an employee in the first place.
The Commission disagreed, and the reasoning is the part every offshore-employing business needs to sit with.
The Contract Title Doesn’t Matter. The Substance Does.
Following the High Court’s approach in Personnel Contracting [2022] HCA 1, the Commission looks at what the contract actually requires, not what it’s called at the top of the page.
In Pascua’s case, the same document titled “Independent Contractor Agreement” also referred to her as an employee throughout, described her pay as “AUD$18 per hour Salary all inclusive as a Full Time Employee,” required her personally to perform the work with no right to delegate it, set daily KPIs and task requirements, and included a Non-Disclosure Agreement titled “Employee Non-Disclosure Agreement.”
She wasn’t running a business. She was working inside someone else’s.
Five Questions the Commission Actually Asks
The decision, and the broader case law behind it, points to a handful of questions that matter more than any label in a contract.
Does the company control how, when, and where the work gets done? Is the worker plugged into company systems, email, and phone lines the same way an employee would be? Can the worker send someone else to do the job, or does the contract require that specific person? Is the pay structured as a flat hourly rate with no upside or downside risk, especially one sitting below award minimums? And does the worker have their own clients, their own equipment, their own commercial risk, or are they simply doing your admin from another country?
If most of those point toward “employee,” the label on the contract won’t save you.
Why This Is Landing Now
Offshoring knowledge work has scaled fast across professional services, tech, finance, and mining in Australia. A lot of that work, if it were done from a desk in Brisbane, would obviously be employment. Distance made that easier to overlook. The Pascua decision closes that gap.
Geography isn’t a shield if the employer is a national system employer covered by the Fair Work Act. A contract label isn’t a shield either. And a low hourly rate, ironically, can work against the business paying it, since paying below award rates reads as a sign of employment rather than genuine contracting.
Three separate FWC decisions now sit behind this case, and each one went against the employer. This area of law is still moving. Businesses sitting on unreviewed contractor arrangements are carrying growing exposure, not shrinking exposure.
Three Ways Businesses Are Responding
The first option is to do nothing and hope the arrangement never gets tested. Given where the law is heading, that bet gets worse every quarter.
The second is to restructure the relationship into a genuine contracting arrangement. That means the worker carries real commercial risk, sets their own hours, works for multiple clients, supplies their own equipment, and can delegate the work. Most offshore “contractor” setups don’t look like that today, and getting there isn’t a quick fix.
The third is to use an Employer of Record. An EOR employs the worker in their own jurisdiction, handles local payroll, tax, and statutory obligations, and gives the business the output it needs without creating a direct employment relationship with the worker. It’s a structural fix rather than a paperwork fix, which is exactly what this decision is asking for.
Where AUPY Fits In
We’re a consultancy based in Paraguay and built specifically to work with overseas businesses on offshore advisory, operational support, and project services. Part of what we do is help clients think through exactly this kind of exposure.
One thing that surprises people when they first talk to us: Paraguay sits at UTC-4. When an Australian team logs off, our team is starting its day. Work moves overnight, and by the time a Sydney or Perth office opens the next morning, the queue has already been worked through. It’s not just a cost argument. For teams with bottlenecks tied to the working day, it changes the shape of what gets done and when.
If Pascua has you looking twice at your current offshore contracts, or you’re weighing up an EOR structure alongside genuine overnight capability, we’re happy to talk it through. No pitch deck required.