The Hospitality Industry (General) Award, MA000009, sets minimum rates, classifications, penalties and allowances for hotels, pubs, hostels, nightclubs, function centres and the venues attached to them. It covers working holiday makers on the same terms as anyone else.
Which venues does it actually cover?
Accommodation and licensed venues, and the food service inside them. Hotels, motels, serviced apartments and resorts, caravan parks and hostels, function centres and convention facilities, nightclubs, most casinos, and labour hire companies placing workers into any of those.
A stand alone restaurant or cafe is covered by the Restaurant Industry Award instead, and a fast food outlet by the Fast Food Industry Award. A waiter in a hotel restaurant and a waiter in the restaurant next door are on different awards doing the same job, with different rates and different Sunday penalties. Our guide to the Restaurant Industry Award sets out the other side of that line.
Which classification are you actually on?
One of six grades, following your duties rather than your job title. Introductory level covers the first period in the industry with no prior experience. Level 1 covers kitchen hands, room attendants, porters, glass collectors and food and beverage attendants without responsibility. Level 2 covers bar attendants holding an RSA, cook grade 1 and waiters carrying responsibility. Level 3 covers cook grade 2, head waiter for a section, and security.
Introductory level is time limited. After a defined initial period the employer must move you to Level 1 unless there is a genuine reason for continued training. Leaving a backpacker there for six months is a common quiet underpayment.
How are the rates built up?
In layers, and the flat rate many venues offer replaces all of them with one lower number. The base is the classification rate, reviewed each 1 July in the Annual Wage Review. A casual adds the 25% loading. Then the penalty for the day and time applies on top, then any allowance.
- Saturday: typically a 25% loading on the base, alongside the casual loading
- Sunday: typically 50%, alongside the casual loading
- Public holidays: typically 125%, alongside the casual loading
- Evening work from 7pm to midnight: an additional loading that varies by grade
- Midnight to 7am: a higher overnight loading
Exact percentages and start times sit in the current version of the award and vary between classifications. A flat hourly rate said to cover everything is the clearest indicator the layers were not applied.
What allowances are commonly missed?
Several, missed more often than penalty rates because nobody expects them. The award provides a meal allowance for overtime worked without a break, a split shift allowance where a shift is broken by an unpaid period, a uniform allowance where the employer requires one and does not provide it, a laundry allowance for a required uniform, a first aid allowance for the designated officer, and travel allowances in some short notice circumstances.
The split shift allowance matters most to backpackers, because split shifts are standard in hotel food service and the allowance almost never appears on the payslip.
Why is this award breached so often?
It is among the most complex modern awards in Australia, applied to a workforce that turns over constantly. That produces genuine payroll error as well as deliberate underpayment, and from the worker's side they look identical.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has run repeated campaigns into hospitality compliance for that reason. Raising it with the employer first is worth doing, because a share of these are configuration errors that get corrected once identified.
What does underpayment do to your tax and super?
It understates both. If the wages you should have received are higher than the wages reported to the ATO, the income on your return is understated and the 12% superannuation calculated on those wages with it.
Recovering underpaid wages increases three things at once: the assessable income in the year the back payment is received, the super the employer owed, and eventually the DASP balance you claim when you leave. The wages themselves run through Fair Work, not the tax system, and our guide to unpaid super covers the super half.
Your venue and your shifts move the rate.
The award is a public document. What it entitles you to is decided by facts about your particular job.
- Whether the venue is an accommodation or licensed venue, which decides whether this award applies at all.
- Which classification your duties correspond to, and whether you were left at introductory level too long.
- Whether you are casual, which brings the 25% loading on top of every penalty.
- Which hours you worked, since evening, weekend and holiday penalties are separate and stack.
- Whether an enterprise agreement applies, which is common in larger hotel groups and overrides the award.
- Whether allowances such as split shift and uniform were paid at all.
- Whether you are engaged under an ABN, in which case no award covers you.
Whatever was withheld across every venue you worked at reconciles at the end of the financial year, and you can estimate your tax refund from your year to date figures.