Horticulture Award: Pay Rates, Classifications, and Obligations

The Fair Work Commission’s recent changes to the Horticulture Award tightened entry-level classifications (effective 1 April 2025). Additionally, from 1 July 2025, the Annual Wage Review increased all minimum award rates, including the Piecework Minimum Wage Guarantee, by 3.5%. 

To ensure you pay your workers correctly and reduce the risk of underpayments later, our guide explains who the Award covers, how to match roles to the right level, and the key pay and rostering rules to factor in.

Award Basics

The Horticulture Award 2020 sets the minimum pay rates and key working conditions for many employees working in Australia’s horticulture industry.

The Award helps ensure staff are paid fairly and receive the correct core entitlements. That includes minimum base rates, weekend and public holiday rates, overtime, breaks, allowances, and leave, plus the general rights set out in the National Employment Standards (NES)—minimum standards that apply to most Australian employees.

Employees are grouped into classification levels (Level 1 to Level 5) based on their work, skills, and responsibilities.

Who’s covered under the Horticulture Award?

The Fair Work Horticulture Award applies to employers in the horticulture industry across Australia (e.g., businesses that grow, pick, pack, and process fruit and vegetables, or operate horticultural enterprises such as orchards) and to the employees they hire to perform horticultural work.

Note: It can also apply to labour hire (on-hire) workers when they’re placed into horticulture jobs, and to group training organisations and trainees doing horticulture work.

Activities covered

Common horticulture tasks include:

• Planting, sowing, raising, and cultivating crops.
• Harvesting and picking.
• Washing, packing, storing, grading, forwarding, or treating crops.

It also covers land and property preparation when it’s connected to horticulture work, like:

• Clearing, fencing, trenching, and draining. 
• Preparing/treating land.

Types of crops covered

The Award uses a broad definition of “horticultural crops,” including:

• Vegetables, fruits, grains, hops, nuts, fungi, flowers, and olives, plus seeds.
• Other specialised crops (unless they’re specifically named as a broadacre field crop under the Pastoral Award [insert link]).

Who isn’t covered under the Horticulture Award?

The Award doesn’t apply to everyone doing “farmwork.” In particular, it doesn’t cover:

• The wine industry (see the Wine Award).
• Silviculture (see the Silviculture Award).
• Sugar farming (see the Sugar Award).
• Cotton ginneries (see the Cotton Ginning Award).
• Plant nurseries (see the Nursery Award).

It also doesn’t apply if employers are covered by a different industrial instrument (like a modern enterprise award or enterprise agreement).

Horticulture Award Classifications and Levels

Under the Horticulture Award, the amount you pay an employee depends on their classification level (the type of work they do and the level of skill/responsibility it involves) and their employment type (full-time, part-time, or casual).

Main classification levels

Employment types

The Horticulture Award 2020 includes 3 main types of employment: full-time, part-time, and casual.

Full-time

Full-time employees work an average of 38 ordinary hours per week (spread over a 4-week period). They’re ongoing staff with consistent schedules and get all the standard entitlements, including paid annual leave, personal leave, and public holiday rights.

Part-time

Part-time employees typically work fewer than 38 ordinary hours per week. They receive the same pay and conditions as full-time employees, but on a pro-rata basis (e.g., if they work half the hours of a full-time employee, they’ll usually receive about half the annual leave and other entitlements). 

Casual

Casual employees are generally engaged as needed, and their ordinary hours are the lesser of an average of 38 hours per week or the hours you require them to work. They’re paid their base rate plus a 25% casual loading, so 125% (this higher rate is paid instead of annual leave and personal and carer’s leave, etc.). 

Each time you roster a casual employee, you must pay them for at least 2 continuous hours, even if the shift is shorter.

Ordinary Hours

Before you can work out the right pay rates and entitlements, it helps to understand ordinary hours. In simple terms, ordinary hours are an employee’s “normal” rostered hours, i.e., the hours you can schedule as ordinary time before overtime starts.

Full-time and part-time employees 

For full-time and part-time employees (other than shiftworkers), ordinary hours are capped at 152 hours over a 4-week period.

These ordinary hours are usually worked:

• Monday to Friday, or
• Monday to Saturday, if you and the majority of affected employees agree.

Ordinary hours are normally worked between 6:00 am and 6:00 pm (unless varied by mutual agreement).

Daily limits:

• Usually up to 8 ordinary hours per day, or
• Up to 12 ordinary hours in a day if you and the majority of employees agree.

Anything worked outside or above ordinary hours counts as overtime.

Casual employees 

For casual employees (other than shiftworkers), ordinary hours are capped at 304 hours over 8 weeks.

Casual ordinary hours can be worked at any time, with extra loading to compensate for night work.

How pay works during ordinary hours:

• 5:00 am to 8:30 pm (any day, excluding public holidays): Base rate + 25% casual loading.
• 8:31 pm to 4:59 am (any day, excluding public holidays): Base rate + 25% casual loading + 15% extra loading.

Daily cap:

• A casual can work up to 12 ordinary hours per engagement (or per day).

Anything beyond 12 hours per engagement or per day, or 304 ordinary hours over 8 weeks, counts as overtime.

Ordinary hours for shiftworkers follow separate rules. If shiftwork applies in your workplace, refer directly to the Award for detailed requirements.

Pay Rates and Entitlements

Under the Horticulture Award, the 2025 pay rates and entitlements set the minimum standards for what you must pay covered employees and the key conditions for hours, overtime, penalties, allowances, and leave.

Minimum base rates

Below are the Horticulture Award rates for full-time and part-time adult employees:

To put the minimum base rate into practice, let’s take a forklift driver at an orchard business.

In this case, the employee would likely fall under Level 3. If they worked full-time, they’d earn the current minimum weekly rate of $973.80.

If they worked 20 hours per week part-time, you’d pay them $25.63/hour, which would total $512.60/week (20 × $25.63).

And if they were engaged as a casual Level 3 employee, they’d earn the same base rate of $25.63/hour, plus a 25% casual loading of $6.41/hour, which brings their casual rate to $32.04/hour. So over 20 hours, they’d earn $640.80 (20 × $32.04).

Piece rates

A piece rate (often called piecework) is where someone is paid per unit of output rather than per hour (e.g., per bucket, punnet, bin, or kilogram picked/packed).

Under the Horticulture Award, you can use piece rates for full-time, part-time, or casual employees, but there are some key rules:

• The piece rate must be set high enough for a “competent” pieceworker (an employee with at least 76 hours’ experience performing that specific task) to earn at least 15% more per hour than their Award hourly rate (including the 25% casual loading for casuals).
• There’s a daily minimum safety net. For each day worked, the pieceworker must be paid at least their Award hourly rate multiplied by the hours worked that day (even if their piece count is low).
• Extra tasks are paid hourly. If an employee does any work outside the piecework task (e.g., cleaning, moving equipment, or setting up), the employer must pay them for that time at their hourly rate.
• Public holidays are paid 200% of the piece rate for work on a public holiday.
• Some “hour-based” rules don’t apply to pieceworkers (including ordinary hours/rostering and overtime rules), so it’s essential to track hours worked and keep clear records.

For a practical example of how piece rates work (including the minimum daily “top-up” rule) and to access the official piecework record form/template, visit: Pay and piece rates (Horticulture).

If you employ juniors or need other specialised rates and rules (like apprentices/trainees or higher duties), it’s best to check the Award and the Horticulture Award pay guide for the specific details that apply to your situation.

Penalty rates

Penalty rates are higher pay rates that apply when an employee works at certain times (e.g., at night or on a public holiday). If a penalty applies, you pay the employee the penalty rate instead of their usual base rate for those hours.

Let’s use our example Level 3 forklift driver whose minimum base rate is $25.63 per hour. If they work on a public holiday full-time or part-time, they’re paid 200% of their ordinary hourly rate. So their public holiday rate would be $51.26/hour (2 × $25.63), and if they worked 8 hours, they’d earn $410.08 (8 × $51.26).

If they work as a casual, their public holiday pay is 225% of the ordinary hourly rate, which means they’d take home $57.67/hour (2.25 × $25.63), and for 8 hours work, they’d earn $461.36 (8 × $57.67).

For more information, refer to the Award.

Overtime rules and rates

Overtime is any time an employee works outside their ordinary hours (i.e., beyond the “normal” rostered hours you can schedule before overtime applies).

Overtime rates for permanent (full-time and part-time) employees are as follows:

Note: If permanent employees are required to work on a Sunday, they must be paid for at least 3 hours.

For casual employees, overtime is paid at 175% of their ordinary hourly rate (this rate already includes the casual loading) when they work overtime hours (e.g., over the daily/engagement or 8-week caps).

Let’s use our Level 3 forklift driver to understand this. Their minimum base rate is $25.63 per hour.

If they are full-time or part-time (permanent) and work 2 hours of overtime on a weekday, those hours are paid at 150%. That means their overtime rate is $38.45/hour (1.5 × $25.63), so for 2 hours they’d earn $76.90.

If the same Level 3 worker is a casual and those hours count as overtime, overtime is paid at 175% (this already includes the casual loading). That means their overtime rate is $44.85/hour (1.75 × $25.63), so for 2 hours they’d earn $89.70.

Breaks

Break rules set the minimum meal and rest breaks you need to provide during a shift, and the minimum time employees should have between shifts.

The key break rules under the Horticulture Award are as follows:

There are also rules about a 10-hour break between finishing work one day and starting the next. Check the Award for those details.

Allowances

Allowances are extra payments on top of an employee’s base rate. They usually apply when an employee assumes additional responsibilities or works in unusual conditions.

For more allowances and their details, refer to the Award.

Leave

Most leave comes from the NES, which applies no matter which award someone is under. The Horticulture Award then adds extra rules about certain leave types.

Annual leave

Who gets this leave under the Award:

• Full-time employees get 4 weeks of paid annual leave each year, and part-time employees get the same amount on a pro-rata basis (based on the hours they work). 
• Casual employees don’t get paid annual leave.

Here are the key Award-specific points to know:

• You can track annual leave in hours (optional): If it’s easier for payroll, you can agree with the majority of employees to record yearly leave as an hourly balance (e.g., a full-time employee’s 4 weeks can be recorded as 152 hours).
• What you pay during annual leave: When an employee takes annual leave, they’re paid their usual earnings for the ordinary hours they would have worked had they not been on leave. On top of that, they also get 17.5% extra (annual leave loading) while they’re on annual leave.
• If you pay by Electronic Funds Transfer: You can keep paying them in their usual pay cycle while they’re on leave.

Annual leave in advance

The Award allows annual leave to be taken before it’s accrued, but only if there’s a written agreement. This should specify how much leave is being taken in advance and when it starts. It also has to be signed (with a parent or guardian signing if the employee is under 18).

If the employee resigns before they’ve accrued that leave, the Award allows you to deduct the unaccrued portion from their final pay, in line with the agreement.

Excessive leave accruals

The Award treats leave accruals as an “excessive” balance if an employee has accrued more than 8 weeks of paid annual leave. 

In that case, there are extra rules about how you and the employee can deal with the excess (i.e., when you can direct them to take leave and when they can require you to grant leave), along with notice periods and minimum balances that must remain.

Cashing out annual leave

Employees can cash out some of their accrued annual leave (get paid instead of taking time off), but only through a separate written agreement each time. After cashing out, they must still have at least 4 weeks of annual leave left, and they can only cash out up to 2 weeks in any 12-month period.

The payment must be at least what they would’ve received if they had taken the leave, so it’s worth checking the Award for the detailed rules.

Other NES leave

The NES also provides other types of leave that apply to most employees, including those under the Horticulture Award:

• Personal/carer’s leave: 10 days.
• Compassionate leave: Usually 2 days per occasion.
• Parental leave: Up to 12 months of unpaid leave.
• Community service leave: Unpaid leave for activities like emergency services duties, other than jury duty.
• Family and domestic violence leave: 10 days with extra confidentiality rules around records and payslips.

Check the NES and Award together when calculating leave so employees receive the full entitlements they’re owed.

How To Determine the Right Horticulture Award Coverage

To work out whether the Horticulture Award applies to your business and workers, and what to pay, you usually need to check the industry, role, and classification level.

1) Check the industry (what the business does)

The Award generally applies if your business is in the horticulture industry, meaning the work involves activities such as growing, harvesting, picking, packing, storing, grading, or treating horticultural crops (and related land-prep work like clearing or fencing).

2) Check the role (what the employee actually does day to day)

Even if the business is horticultural, you still need to assess the employee’s actual duties and whether they fit within the Award’s classification structure. This is where Schedule A—Classification Definitions helps. It sets out Levels 1 to 5.

A simple way to choose the level is to look at:

• Skill and responsibility: Are they doing basic manual tasks, or operating machinery/coordinating others?
• Supervision: Do they work under close supervision, general supervision, or mostly on their own?
• Typical duties: Match their regular tasks to the examples listed in Schedule A (e.g., basic picking/packing vs. operating harvesters/forklifts vs. more advanced coordination/technical work).

If an employee regularly has duties across levels, it’s usually safest to classify them at the level that matches the highest level of skill/responsibility they use most often. 

3) Check for common exclusions

The Award doesn’t cover every type of agricultural work. For example, it excludes work in the wine industry, plant nurseries, cotton, sugar, and forestry (silviculture/afforestation).

Horticulture Award: A practical, real-world example

Let’s take Alice, a part-time employee working at a fruit and vegetable packing facility.

Alice works in the horticulture industry, handling horticultural crops (such as fruit and vegetables) and performing tasks including packing, grading, and quality checks. That kind of work is covered by the Horticulture Award. 

Alice’s role includes:

• Performing machine setup, loading/operation, and helping keep production running smoothly.
• Quality checks/quality assurance on packed produce.
• Assisting with inventory or store control tasks.
• Using licensed equipment if required (where relevant).

Because those duties are at a higher skill/responsibility level than basic picking/packing, Alice is best matched to Level 4 under Schedule A (which sets out the Level 1–5 definitions and example duties).

As a Level 4 employee, Alice’s minimum base pay must be at least $26.55 per hour. If she works 20 hours per week part-time, that works out to $531 per week (20 × $26.55).

Employer Obligations, Record-Keeping, and Common Mistakes

Under the Horticulture Award, you’ll generally need to:

• Classify employees correctly based on their actual work, then pay at least the appropriate minimum rate for that level.
• Apply the right extra pay when it comes up, like public holiday rates, overtime, annual leave loading, and casual loading.
• Track hours properly so it’s clear what was ordinary time vs. overtime (especially for casuals, where overtime can also be triggered by the daily/engagement or 8-week caps).
• Pay allowances when they apply (e.g., leading hand, wet work, first aid, meal allowance for overtime, and reimbursements for travel/accommodation/tools where required).
• Handle annual leave rules properly (including 17.5% leave loading and using written agreements where the Award requires them, such as leave in advance or cashing out). 

Record-keeping

It’s important to keep clear records of hours worked, pay rates, and any extras you pay (like allowances). The Award also notes that allowances should be identified separately on pay records/payslips.

For tools and templates, you can use the Fair Work Ombudsman’s free record-keeping and payroll guides.

Common mistakes to avoid

Steer clear of these common errors: 

• Paying the wrong rate because the employee is at a higher level than you classified them.
• Mixing up ordinary hours and overtime, especially when hours are worked outside the ordinary span or above caps.
• Forgetting the minimum engagement for casuals.
• Using outdated pay rates after annual wage updates.

Resources and Links

For further reading and official resources, visit:

• Horticulture Award 2020 [MA000028]: The official Award text.
• Fair Work Information Statement (FWIS): A summary of employee rights and employer responsibilities under the NES.
• Annual Leave Cash-Out Agreement (Fair Work Commission): A template employers can use when arranging a lawful leave cash-out agreement with an employee.
• Horticulture Award piecework record form: A simple official form you can use to record piecework arrangements and track piecework hours and earnings.

Disclaimer

The information provided here is a summary only and does not constitute legal advice. While we have made every effort to ensure the information provided is up to date and reliable, we cannot guarantee its completeness, accuracy, or applicability to your specific situation. Laws change frequently, and outcomes may vary depending on your business circumstances. We recommend consulting a qualified employment lawyer before making decisions related to workforce management. Please note that we cannot be held liable for any actions taken or not taken based on the information presented on this website.