What are ordinary wages?
Ordinary wages are the wages paid to the worker for cleaning work under an award or agreement and include:
- Award rate of pay
- Over award payments
- Shiftwork, weekend work and public holiday penalty rates on normal rostered shifts forming ordinary hours of duty (other than overtime)
- Annual leave (where taken as leave)
- Bereavement leave
- Personal/Carer’s leave
- Casual loading
- Long service leave (where taken as leave)
- Sick leave
- Paid maternity/paternity leave/parental leave (when paid directly by the employer)
- Public holidays
- Workers compensation payments (when made by the employer in the first instance and the employer is then reimbursed by the insurance company)
- Jury service
- First aid allowance
- Toilet allowance
- Refuse Collection allowance
- Broken Shift allowance
Wages must be a gross figure – before tax and any other deductions including salary sacrificing.
Payments that are not to be included when calculating ordinary wages are:
- Overtime (for full-time staff), leave loading, lump sum payments for accrued annual leave, sick leave or long service leave paid on termination, payments in lieu of notice
- Christmas bonuses and ex-gratia payments, travel allowance, payment for materials & equipment, one-off bonuses, meal allowance, protective clothing allowance
- Workers compensation payments where they are paid directly by the insurance company to the worker and redundancy payments
- Australian Government Paid Parental Leave Scheme
- Superannuation