National Employment Standards

Purpose of National Employment Standards

To ensure fair and consistent minimum employment conditions, preventing contracts from offering lesser conditions and covering key areas like leave, hours, and termination.

Minimum wage

All employees working in Australia are entitled to a minimum wage. The minimum amount an employee can be paid for the work that they’re doing.

Current Minimum Wage

National minimum wage is $915.90 per week, for a 38 hour week, or $24.10 per hour

Awards

Modern awards are legal documents that outline the minimum pay rates and conditions of employment.

Unfair Dismissal

is where an employer terminates an employee’s contract without a fair reason to do so

Mnemonic For Minimum Working Conditions

Many- Maximum weekly hours

Readers- Requests for flexible working arrangements

Often- Offers and requests to convert from casual to permanent employment

Pause- Parental leave and related entitlements

And- Annual leave

Ponder- Personal/carer’s leave, compassionate leave and unpaid family and domestic violence leave

Complex- Community service leave

Legal- Long service leave

Papers- Public holidays

Near- Notice of termination and redundancy pay

Files- Fair Work Information Statement and Causal Employment Information Statement

 

Maximum weekly hours

38 per week for a permanent full time- employee, plus reasonable additional working hours

Requests for flexible working arrangements

An entitlement allowing certain employees to request a change in their working arrangements because of their circumstances

Offers and requests to convert from casual to permanent employment

casual employees with 6–12 months of service can choose to initiate conversion to permanent employment if they work a regular pattern

Parental leave and related entitlements

are entitled to 12 months of unpaid parental leave, with a right to request an additional 12 months

Annual leave

are entitled to 4 weeks of paid annual leave per year (5 weeks for certain shift workers)

Personal/carer’s leave, compassionate leave and unpaid family and domestic violence leave

• Personal/Carer’s Leave: 10 days paid per year for permanent employees; 2 days unpaid per year for casual employees.

• Compassionate Leave: 2 days paid per occasion for permanent employees; 2 days unpaid per occasion for casual employees.

• Family & Domestic Violence Leave: 5 days unpaid per year for all employees (permanent and casual).

Community service leave

entitlement allowing all employees, including casuals, to take unpaid time off for voluntary emergency management activities or jury duty.

Long service leave

a paid entitlement for employees who have worked for the same employer (or within the same industry) for a long period, generally 7 to 10 years

Public holidays

A paid day off or permanent employees if they ordinarily would have worked it, except where reasonably requested to work, in which case a higher pay rate may apply.

Notice of termination and redundancy pay

Up to five weeks’ written notice of termination or payment in lieu and up to 16 weeks’ severance pay on redundancy based on the employee’s total length of continuous service within the business.

Fair Work Information Statement and Causal Employment Information Statement

Employers must provide all new employees with the Fair Work Information Statement and, for casuals, the Casual Employment Information Statement before or as soon as possible after starting work.