Full-time
- Full-time employees can be permanent or for a fixed-term
- Full-time hours are 38 hours per week plus reasonable additional hours
- Full-time employees are entitled to all the National Employment Standards (NES) entitlements, including four weeks of annual leave, 10 days paid personal/carer’s leave, etc.
Part-time
- Part-time employees can be permanent or for a fixed-term
- Part-time hours are less than 38 hours per week
- Part-time employees are entitled to all the NES entitlements, including four weeks of annual leave, 10 days paid personal/carer’s leave, etc., except on a pro-rata basis, based on their ordinary hours of work.
Casual
- Generally, casual employment applies where there is no firm advance commitment that the employee’s work will continue indefinitely with an agreed pattern of work. Therefore, casual employees generally have no set or minimum hours of work
- Casual employees are generally not entitled to NES entitlements, however, are entitled to paid family and domestic violence leave, unpaid carer’s leave, unpaid community service leave and compassionate leave
- In addition, casual employees have a pathway to become a permanent employee under the NES.
- Casual employees of small business employers can request to become a permanent employee after 12 months and the small business employer must respond and advise to employee of any reason to refuse the request, which can only be on reasonable business grounds.
- Non-small business employers are required to offer casual employees to convert to permanent employment within 21 days of the employee’s 12 month anniversary if they’ve worked regular and systematic hours on an ongoing basis for at least the past 6 months and will likely continue to do so without significant changes
- Because casual employees do not receive most of the paid NES entitlements, they are paid a casual loading of 25% on top of the ordinary minimum wage for a permanent employee
Shift work
- A shift worker is an employee who performs shift work and gets an extra payment for working shift hours. The applicable modern award will define shift work, different types of shifts and the penalty rate for working each shift.
- Some shift workers get 5 weeks of annual leave a year instead of 4 weeks.
Daily hire & weekly hire
- Some modern awards allow for some employee types to be engaged on a daily and weekly basis. This includes:
- Trades people and labourers who work under the Building and Construction General On-site Award
- Mechanics and plumbers who work under the Plumbing and Fire Sprinklers Award
- Daily hire employees are like full-time and part-time employees as they still receive entitlements such as annual leave and sick leave. In addition, daily hire employees:
- Are only required to give or receive one day’s notice when leaving their job
- Tradespeople are paid for an extra hour at the end of their employment to collect, clean and pack away their tools
- Receive a “follow-the-job” loading, which is a higher rate of pay that compensates for the time they spend not working between jobs
- Weekly hire employees are treated like permanent employees.
Labour hire employees
- Labour hire (or on-hire) employees are engaged by a labour-hire provider, which supplies workers to a host organisation.
- Labour hire employees still receive entitlements from the NES and an applicable award or enterprise agreement. The applicable award/agreement is the one that covers the host organisation will generally apply to the labour hire employee.
- The responsibility lies with the labour-hire business to ensure that labour hire employees receive their minimum employment entitlements.