employment australia
Leave provisions for part-time employees in Australia
<p>What is the basis for the Fair Work Ombudsman's <a href="https://www.fairwork.gov.au/leave/sick-and-carers-leave/paid-sick-and-carers-leave#how-much" rel="nofollow noreferrer">assertions</a> that both:</p>
<ul>
<li>part-time employees entitlement to leave is pro-rata, according to total <em>hours</em> of service as compared to full-time employees, and,</li>
<li>leave entitlements are unaffected by how the hours are <em>spread</em> over the week,</li>
</ul>
<p>as pertains to <em>personal/sick/carer's</em> and <em>annual/recreational</em> leave?</p>
<p>If a HR system tracks accrued leave in units of <em>days</em>, should the reported balances get reduced if an employee adopts a compressed schedule (and increased if they revert to a standard schedule or otherwise reduce their average hours per work day)?</p>
<p>For context, quite different rules apply to other forms of leave (for example, for <em>long service leave</em> there is commonly a system of separate credits for full-time and part-time service; and for <em>domestic violence leave</em>, employees are entitled to the same amount whether they are full-time or even just casual). For <em>personal</em> and <em>annual leave</em>, the <em>Australian Federal <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2023C00036" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Fair Work Act</a>, part 2-2 (National Employment Standards) div. 6 &amp; 7A</em> doesn't appear to distinguish between full-time and part-time.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/judgment-summaries/2020/hca-29-2020-08-13.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MONDELEZ AUSTRALIA PTY LTD v AUTOMOTIVE, FOOD, METALS, ENGINEERING, PRINTING AND KINDRED INDUSTRIES UNION KNOWN AS THE AUSTRALIAN MANUFACTURING WORKERS UNION (AMWU) &amp; ORS; MINISTER FOR JOBS AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS v AUTOMOTIVE, FOOD, METALS, ENGINEERING, PRINTING AND KINDRED INDUSTRIES UNION KNOWN AS THE AUSTRALIAN MANUFACTURING WORKERS UNION (AMWU) &amp; ORS
[2020] HCA 29</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>A majority of the High Court rejected the &quot;working day&quot; construction and instead held that what is meant by a &quot;day&quot; or &quot;10 days&quot; must be calculated by reference to an employee's ordinary hours of work. &quot;10 days&quot; in s 96(1) is two standard five-day working weeks. One &quot;day&quot; refers to a &quot;notional day&quot; consisting of one-tenth of the equivalent of an employee's ordinary hours of work in a two-week period. Because patterns of work do not always follow two-week cycles, the entitlement to &quot;10 days&quot; of paid personal/carer's leave can be calculated as 1/26 of an employee's ordinary hours of work in a year.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So we deal with “notional days” that are measured in hours equivalent to 1/26 (or 1/13 for annual leave for non-shift workers). What an employees actual shift is is irrelevant.</p>
<p>Similarly, their accrued hours don’t change if their normal hours of work change.</p>
