An explosion in disputes brought before the workplace watchdog is being blamed on artificial intelligence making it easy for workers to lodge unfair dismissal, or other claims, even if they have little chance of success.
In a presentation to the Victorian Bar Association on Wednesday, Fair Work Commission president Justice Adam Hatcher said it became clear last year that the tribunal’s operations are being “significantly disrupted” by the widespread availability and use of AI tools.
Applications to deal with contraventions involving dismissal jumped 62 per cent over six months to December last year, compared to the three-year average between 2022 and 2025. Applications to deal with other contraventions leapt 135 per cent.
As generative AI tools become more accessible and widely used, disgruntled workers are finding it easier to use these tools to file formal complaints against their employers.
Hatcher said he didn’t realise, until recently, how easy AI had made the process of getting information and then lodging applications and submissions for remedies under the Fair Work Act.
“The penny really dropped when I tried this exercise myself on ChatGPT late last year,” he said.
“I told ChatGPT that I had been dismissed and asked it what I could do. After I provided it with few basic facts, including the reason for my dismissal and my view that I had been dismissed because I made a complaint a few years earlier, ChatGPT prepared an application under section 365 of the FW [Fair Work] Act that was in a form ready to file together with a witness statement which contained a substantially invented story about my dismissal.”
Hatcher said it took less than 10 minutes, with the AI telling him that a “realistic scenario” was that he would get compensation in the range of $15,000 to $40,000.
But based on the facts he fed to ChatGPT, the case could not actually have been assessed as having reasonable prospects of success, he said.
Although there have also been legal changes, such as Secure Jobs, Better Pay and Closing Loopholes legislation, they have not been “principal drivers” of the Commission’s sudden jump in workload, he said.
Aside from concerns about AI’s accuracy, Hatcher said the increased workload was putting stress on the commission’s staff.
Until 2023, the commission was getting about 30,000 lodgements a year. After that year, there was a sudden increase. The total number of lodgements climbed to 40,000 in 2023-24, then 44,000 in 2024-25, breaking previous records.
Hatcher said this financial year, he expected closer to 55,000 cases to cross the commission’s table.
“There is no sign of this growth trend plateauing out, and we have no idea what the ‘new normal’ will be.”
“The bottom line is that, by the end of this financial year, it is likely that the FWC’s total workload will have increased by over 70 per cent in the space of three years,” Hatcher said.
That largely reflects a growing share of people — 84 per cent in the year to February 2024, up from nearly 76 per cent the year before – contesting their dismissals according to rough calculations by the commission.
While there used to be a clear correlation between the number of dismissal-related applications and the state of the labour market, with these cases tracking the number of retrenchments, Hatcher said that statistical relationship had broken down over the past couple of years.
“That [the increased workload] is principally being caused by the increasing use of AI tools by potential litigants is, in my view, the only reasonable inference which can be drawn,” he said.
The key to this conclusion, Hatcher noted, became apparent in the widespread use of AI-generated language in the applications being filed.
“Once you learn what this looks like, it becomes pretty easy to spot,” he said.
“If you’re offered an appointment to the FWC, don’t accept it on the basis that you think you will have a better work-life balance,” he warned. “You won’t.”
Crucially, it is also affecting the commission’s performance, Hatcher said, including timelines to process, hear and resolve applications, but also to deal with major cases of considerable public importance such as gender-based undervaluation matters and enterprise bargaining agreements.
While Hatcher said AI brought some benefits, including helping workers gain awareness of the commission and its processes, the tool could be harmful if it invented facts or glossed up a general protections claim for someone who didn’t meet the criteria.
In response to the growing use of AI and increasing workloads, the commission will make changes including requiring people to disclose the use of AI in forms and documents.
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Millie Muroi is the economics writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She was formerly an economics correspondent based in Canberra’s Press Gallery and the banking writer based in Sydney.Connect via X or email.
