Public holidays are part of the National Employment Standards (NES). The NES apply to all employees covered by the national workplace relations system, regardless of any award, registered agreement or employment contract.
Employees have the right to be absent from work on a day or part-day that is a public holiday and are protected from adverse action for reasonably refusing to work on a public holiday?
As the Australia Day public holiday is shortly upon us on us, it’s important that if you are planning to roster an employee to work on Australia Day, that you give them the choice to work or not.
Whilst you can request an employee to work on a public holiday, the request must be reasonable and the employee can refuse a request to work if the employee has reasonable grounds, or request is unreasonable.
When deciding if an employee will be rostered to work on a public holiday, consider:
Employers can require an employee to work a public holiday if the:
It’s important that your employees are paid correctly and employees (except casual employees) who normally work on the day a public holiday falls will be paid their base pay rate for the ordinary hours they would have worked if they had not been away because of the public holiday. The base pay rate doesn’t include bonuses, overtime, penalty rates, loadings, any incentive-based payments, monetary allowances.
Need help in understanding your obligations? South Australian Business Chamber Members can call our Business Advice Hotline on (08) 8300 0000 (select option 1).
