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Jockr64
07-11-2012, 10:50 AM
I am a fifo worker on a 14/7 roster, paid a salary on an hourly rate, work 12 hrs a day, and our hours are averaged out to 243.3 per month/ 8hrs a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks yr. If I am entitled to 20 days A/L, when I take a day off should it be as 8 or 12 hours? If anyone can reference a decision or relevant part of legislation I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

Cottoneyes
07-11-2012, 12:00 PM
This is why I'm a fan of accruing annual leave in hours, not days.

On the above scenario, I would expect you to accrue 224 hours a year (56 average hours a week by 4 weeks), or 1 hour for every 13 paid hour

When you took leave, I would only expect the hours to be deducted according to the roster for the time actually away. (ie, if on the week off, no annual leave would be deducted for this week)

No legislation or decisions to back this up, just what I would use. Would be worth checking your EBA, award or contract to see if there is anything particular in there to cover this particular scenario.

Jockr64
07-11-2012, 05:01 PM
Thanks for the reply cotton eyes.

I have done a lot of research into this, we are actually in the process of negotiating a new EBA.
I believe the intention of the NES and the FWA is for the entitlement to be 4 weeks. However, you were correct about the total hours for the entitlement, but when leave is taken, 12 hrs are deducted per day, which only amounts to 20 days in total. Yes it is a 2 week on 1 week off roster, but actual hours worked per week are 84. Given that this totals 2919 hrs per year, compared to a 9-5, 5 day week which totals roughly 1900 hrs, but who still get 4 weeks.
The entitlement is going to be reduced to about 223 hrs, which when divided by 8 does equal 28 days!

I was hoping there was a precedence or reference which may help with this issue, but it appears neither of us can find one..

Thanks again for the quick reply.

Greg Schmidt
07-11-2012, 05:35 PM
Hi Jockr64,

Under the NES, annual leave entitlements accrue "according to the employee's ordinary hours of work", and any overtime worked would not be relevant to the leave accrual. Most people who work 243 hours per month would probably be considered to have worked around 165 hours of ordinary time (38 hours per week) plus a fair bit of overtime. When a day of annual leave is taken, the worker would typically be paid 8 hours (or 7.6 hours?) of annual leave plus leave loading, with no payment for overtime that was not worked on that day.

Your situation is not a standard work pattern, with a 14/7 roster and a salary arrangement, and your contract / EBA may not actually distinguish between payment for ordinary hours and payment for overtime work. However, if the EBA allows for a fixed salary to be paid for that work roster, you can bet that FWA considered the Better Off Overall Test in terms of ordinary time hours and overtime hours. So the EBA may well specify how much of your salary is attributed to ordinary time hours and how much is attributed to overtime, penalty payments and other entitlements. Would be worth checking.

In any case, I wouldn't assume that you would be paid for 12 hours of annual leave just because you would otherwise have worked 12 hours (including overtime) on a particular day. But just as there's more than one way to skin a cat, there may be more than one way to fairly administer your leave entitlements so that you do get the benefit of 4 weeks of paid annual leave.