‘Yeah, you’re fired’: Legal assistant unfairly dismissed from Qld firm

A remote legal assistant has successfully won an unfair dismissal case after being abruptly terminated during a Skype call, following allegations of repeated mistakes and failure to follow instructions.

Legal assistant Joanna Pascua has been found by the Fair Work Commission to have been unfairly dismissed by Queensland-based credit repair firm MyCRA Lawyers, after being terminated without warning or proper procedure.

The decision follows an incident in which Pascua, who worked remotely from the Philippines, was abruptly fired during a 37-minute Skype call with the firm’s principal, Graham Doessel, after she sent an email to a credit provider that allegedly failed to follow his instructions.

During the Skype call, Doessel accused Pascua of repeatedly ignoring instructions he had previously given her. The conversation, described as “heated”, ultimately culminated in her abrupt dismissal with the words: “Yeah, you’re fired.”

The situation escalated further when Doessel remotely accessed Pascua’s computer and accused her of misconduct for allegedly copying company information to her personal drive.

He then reportedly threatened to involve the Australian Federal Police and claimed that Philippine authorities would imprison her if she refused to grant him continued access to her computer.

When Pascua first brought her case to the Fair Work Commission in late 2024, she stated that the Doessel Group had installed software on her computer without her knowledge, enabling remote access and control.

In response to the allegations against her, Pascua explained that she had been “under pressure”, was “not a lawyer”, and that her “excessive” workload had led to mistakes.

Rather than addressing her concerns, Fair Work Commission deputy president Tony Slevin revealed that Doessel told her she was “talking like a crazy woman and suggested she seek psychological help”.

The call came after what Pascua described as a “difficult” seven months working under Doessel’s supervision. She alleged he had been “micromanaging her work, being overly critical of her, overworking her, setting unreasonable expectations, and refusing to approve overtime”.

Pascua received her termination notice via email on 20 March 2024, which cited the unlawful copying of company and client information to her personal drive as the reason for her dismissal.

However, Slevin found that this was not the true basis for her termination.

“Mr Doessel stated that while he discovered that Ms Pascua had unlawfully taken confidential records and saved them to her personal computer, that was after he dismissed her,” Slevin said.

“She was not terminated for copying the material. She was dismissed for poor performance in making repeated mistakes, failing to follow procedures, and failing to follow instructions.”

While the email Pascua sent contained errors, and it was presented that this was not the first time this happened, Slevin made the decision that those mistakes didn’t justify the dismissal.

“They did not cause damage to the respondent other than perhaps some embarrassment that it was not presented in a professional manner,” Slevin said.

Slevin also found that Pascua was given “no warning of the dismissal and there was no discussion with her prior to Mr Doessel announcing his decision to ‘fire’ her”.

Given the breakdown in the employment relationship, reinstatement was deemed inappropriate. Instead, Slevin ordered compensation based on the assumption that she would have remained employed for another 15 weeks, awarding her a total of $10,800.

The case: Ms Joanna Pascua v Doessel Group Pty Ltd (U2024/3881)