Quirks in mod­ern awards #4: No over­time rates for casu­als in the Hor­ti­cul­ture Award 2010

The major­i­ty of employ­ees in Aus­tralia are cov­ered by an indus­try / occu­pa­tion spe­cif­ic mod­ern award. Whilst many of the awards con­tain sim­i­lar pro­vi­sions, in this series of occa­sion­al arti­cles we exam­ine unusu­al award claus­es which are some­times missed by employers.

Most mod­ern awards pro­vide that all employ­ees – full-time, part-time and casu­al – are paid over­time rates when they work over a cer­tain num­ber of ​“ordi­nary hours” per day or week, or when they per­form work out­side a cer­tain ​“span” of hours.

Typ­i­cal­ly the first two or three hours of over­time are paid at time-and-a-half and there­after at double-time.

How­ev­er, as clause 22 of the Hor­ti­cul­ture Award 2010 only defines what ​“ordi­nary hours” are for full-time and part-time employ­ees, the impli­ca­tion is that there is no lim­it to the ordi­nary hours a casu­al employ­ee can work and no over­time is payable.

That casu­als are not enti­tled to over­time rates under the Award is a view sup­port­ed by the Fair Work Ombuds­man – see: https://​www​.fair​work​.gov​.au/​e​m​p​l​o​y​e​e​-​e​n​t​i​t​l​e​m​e​n​t​s​/​h​o​u​r​s​-​o​f​-​w​o​r​k​-​b​r​e​a​k​s​-​a​n​d​-​r​o​s​t​e​r​s​/​h​o​u​r​s​-​o​f​-​w​o​r​k​/​w​h​e​n​-​o​v​e​r​t​i​m​e​-​a​p​p​l​i​e​s​-​i​n​d​u​s​t​r​y​-​s​p​e​c​i​f​i​c​/​h​o​r​t​i​c​u​l​t​u​r​e​-​award

Casu­als do appear to be enti­tled to a high­er rate for work­ing on pub­lic hol­i­days: https://​www​.fair​work​.gov​.au/​l​i​b​r​a​r​y​/​k​6​0​0​1​4​1​_​o​v​e​r​t​i​m​e​-​p​e​n​a​l​t​y​-​r​a​t​e​s​-​f​o​r​-​c​a​s​u​a​l​s​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​h​o​r​t​i​c​u​l​t​u​r​e​-​award