Penalty rates are the higher rates that apply to hours worked outside ordinary time: weekends, public holidays, evenings and early starts. They come from the award covering your job, not from your employer's goodwill.
Where do your penalty rates actually come from?
From the modern award or enterprise agreement covering your industry, a legal instrument rather than a workplace policy. The Fair Work Commission sets and reviews them, and an employer cannot pay below them by agreement, by contract or by a flat rate arrangement.
So the question is not what your boss pays on Sundays. It is which award covers the venue and which classification you are on, because those two answers produce every figure that follows.
What do penalty rates look like in hospitality?
The Hospitality Industry (General) Award covers cafes, restaurants, pubs and hotels, and covers most working holiday makers. Casuals get the 25% loading in addition to the penalty rather than instead of it.
- Weekday evening after 7pm: around 110 to 115% of the ordinary rate
- Saturday: around 125%
- Sunday: around 175%
- Public holiday: around 225%
Exact figures depend on your classification level and shift pattern, and the award itself is the authority. A casual on a Sunday is on a materially different hourly rate from the same person on a Tuesday.
And in retail?
The General Retail Industry Award follows the same structure with lower Sunday loading. Saturdays run around 125%, Sundays around 150% and public holidays around 225%, with late night penalties keyed to the store's closing time rather than to a fixed hour.
Retail varies more by enterprise agreement than hospitality, particularly in the large supermarket chains, where the agreement rather than the award sets the rate. If you work for a national chain, ask which agreement applies; it will differ from the figures above in both directions.
How do penalties and casual loading combine?
They stack. The 25% casual loading applies to the ordinary rate and the penalty applies as well, so a casual weekend shift sits above both the loaded weekday rate and the permanent weekend rate.
This is where a flat rate arrangement costs most. One figure across every day of the week pays under the award on Saturdays and Sundays even if it looks generous against the weekday rate. A flat hourly number on a payslip covering a Sunday is the clearest sign of underpayment there is.
How do you check whether yours are right?
Read the payslip rather than the total. A compliant payslip separates the hours by rate: ordinary hours at one figure, Saturday hours at another, Sunday and public holiday hours at their own, with the loading identified.
If every hour in a week that included a Sunday appears at one rate, the penalty was not paid. That is a documentation question, resolved by comparing the roster against the payslip for a few weeks.
What if the penalties were not paid?
Work out the correct figure first, because a claim based on the national minimum understates what is owed where an award applies. Identify the award, the classification, the loading and the penalty for each shift, and total the shortfall across the whole period rather than for one week.
Raise it with the employer in writing first, since many are genuine payroll configuration errors rather than deliberate underpayment. The Fair Work Ombudsman handles it where that does not resolve it, the process is free, and working holiday makers have the same standing as anyone else.
Your roster answers this, not the multipliers.
The multipliers are set by instruments you can look up. What you were owed depends on your own roster, and several of the points below apply at once.
- Which award or enterprise agreement covers the venue, since the Sunday rate in particular differs.
- Your classification level within it, which changes the base every multiple is applied to.
- Whether you are casual, since the 25% loading applies on top of the penalty rather than instead of it.
- Which specific hours you worked, because evening, weekend and public holiday penalties are all separate.
- Whether the payslip separates hours by rate or shows a single flat figure.
- Whether you are engaged on an ABN, in which case no award covers you and that is the underlying issue.
Penalty income is taxed the same way as the rest of your wages at the working holiday rate, and you can estimate your tax refund once you know what the year actually came to.