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It was unfair to deny an employee the opportunity to discuss redeployment options, but her "hysterical" and "unbalanced" conduct during the consultation process made her redundancy genuine, the Fair Work Commission has ruled.

In 2020, John Deere's parent company started a global restructure, which ultimately required John Deere's accounting and finance team to fulfil a new role within the organisation.

As a result, the employer no longer required the employee's finance analyst role to be performed, with her duties to be distributed among the current senior analyst and two newly created accountant roles.

The employee subsequently claimed unfair dismissal, arguing there was a continuing need for her role and that she had been subjected to a "major injustice"; she was an "easy target" for redundancy because she was "friendly, helpful and well spoken"...