Piece rates pay you per bin, kilogram or tray rather than per hour, and they are lawful under the Horticulture Award. What makes them lawful is the floor underneath: a pieceworker who is an employee must still receive the minimum hourly rate for their classification.
How does a piece rate work?
You are paid for output rather than time, so the money follows what you pick, weigh or pack, not the hours you stand in the row. Per kilogram of strawberries, per bin of apples, per tray of blueberries, per row weeded, per item packed.
The system rewards speed, which is why farms like it and why experienced pickers often do well out of it. A first week is different: technique takes time to acquire, and someone learning on unfamiliar fruit picks a fraction of what a returning worker does. That gap is what the guaranteed floor exists to handle.
What is the guaranteed floor?
The minimum hourly rate for your classification under the award, applied across the hours you actually worked in the pay period. If your piece earnings divided by your hours come out below it, the employer must top up the difference. It is not discretionary and a farm cannot contract out of it.
From 1 July 2026 the casual minimum across all work is $33.05 an hour, being the $26.44 national minimum wage plus the 25% casual loading, and award classification rates sit above that. The floor is calculated per pay period rather than per day, so a fast Friday can offset a slow Tuesday, but the period as a whole has to clear the line.
How does the top up calculation work?
Total your piece earnings for the period, total the hours worked, and divide one by the other. If the result is below the applicable hourly minimum, the shortfall is the difference between what the hours should have paid and what the pieces did pay.
At $33.05 an hour, twenty hours is $661.00. If those twenty hours produced $400 in piece earnings, the effective rate was $20.00 an hour and the employer owes a top up of $261.00. An employer who pays only the $400 is in breach of the Fair Work Act, whatever was agreed verbally.
What is wrong with a verbal piece agreement?
It is not valid. Piece rate agreements under the Horticulture Award must be in writing, and a rate offered across a shed floor as four dollars a tray, take it or leave it, fails the award at formation rather than on the arithmetic afterwards.
A written agreement records what the rate is, which stops it moving downwards mid season, and it is what makes a later claim straightforward. Where no written agreement exists, the ordinary hourly rate applies by default, usually better for the worker than whatever was said out loud.
Which practices should you watch for?
The ones that reduce your recorded output or your recorded hours without reducing the work. Each is common enough in horticulture to be worth checking specifically.
- Undercounting, where the tally or weight recorded is below what you actually picked
- Unpaid sorting, packing or setup time, which is working time and counts towards the hours in the calculation
- Deductions for accommodation, transport or meals that push the effective rate below the minimum
- No top up applied at all, which is the single most common breach in piece rate work
- Rows or blocks allocated so sparsely that the target is unreachable, which does not remove the floor
How do you audit your own week?
Keep a daily log, because the guarantee only protects pickers who can show what happened. Record start and finish times, breaks, and the units picked or tally tickets issued, and photograph anything the farm writes down before it goes into a drawer.
At the end of the period, run the numbers. Earnings divided by hours gives your effective rate; against the hourly minimum for your classification that gives the shortfall. Persistent results below the floor mean either the rate per unit was set too low to be lawful, or the conditions made the target impossible. Either way the conversation starts with your log, and the Fair Work Ombudsman recovery process runs on that evidence. Our guide to wage theft and recovery covers where it goes from there.
How is piece rate income taxed?
Exactly like any other employment income. PAYG is withheld at 15% with your TFN on file, 12% super is paid on top of gross earnings, and the whole amount appears in your income statement and on your tax return.
The one branch that changes things is whether you are an employee at all. Piece rate work engaged through an ABN has nothing withheld, attracts no super and carries no guaranteed floor, which is why some operators prefer it. Whether that classification is genuine depends on how the work runs rather than what the paperwork says, and our guide to farm work and ABNs sets out the test.