Employees under the Clerks Award can be both shiftworkers and day workers in the same roster period, depending on when they work their ordinary hours.

An employee is a shiftworker when they work their ordinary hours during a shift that finishes between 7pm and 7am. There are 3 types of shifts:

• afternoon shift – finishes after 7pm, but before midnight
• night shift – finishes after midnight, but before 7am
• permanent night shift – a night shift that runs for at least 4 consecutive weeks and doesn’t alternate with afternoon shifts or day work.

An employee is a non-shiftworker when they work their ordinary hours between:

• 7am – 7pm Monday to Friday, and
• 7am – 12:30pm Saturday.

A non-shiftworker can also be called a day worker.

For more information on Hours of Work for non-shiftworkers see Hours of work and select Clerical as the industry.

Changing between shiftwork and non-shiftwork

An employee can switch between being a shiftworker and a non-shiftworker from shift to shift. This will depend on when they finish their ordinary hours.

When a non-shiftworker works more than their ordinary hours and finishes outside the spread of hours they'll be paid overtime. They won't be a shiftworker for that shift.

When an employee is working as a shiftworker, they:

• get shift penalty rates for the ordinary hours worked on the shift
• don’t get paid overtime for working outside the spread of hours for a non-shiftworker.

Use our Pay Calculator to calculate shift penalty rates.

For more information about overtime see When overtime applies and select Clerical as the industry.

For more information about rostering and overtime for shiftworkers see Rostering and overtime for shiftworkers in the Clerks Award.

Example

Tiaan’s a part-time administrator for a company with offices in different time zones around the world. She works 4 days each week, Monday to Thursday.

Shiftwork

Every Thursday Tiaan is rostered to work a night shift from 9pm to 5am so that she can join meetings in different time zones. For this shift Tiaan is a shiftworker. She’s paid the night shift penalty rate.

Last Thursday Tiaan had a meeting that unexpectedly ran late and her employer asked her to work until 8am. She’s still a shiftworker for that shift despite finishing outside of the night shift hours.

Between 7am and 8am Tiaan is paid overtime because she worked more than 10 ordinary hours on a shift.

Non-shiftwork

For the rest of her working week Tiaan is a non-shiftworker, and her ordinary hours of work are 9am to 5pm. She’s paid the minimum hourly award rate.

On Wednesday Tiaan was completing some urgent work and her employer asked her to work until 8pm.

Even though Tiaan finished at 8pm, she’s still a non-shiftworker. This is because her ordinary hours finished at 5pm.

For the period 5pm – 8pm Tiaan is paid overtime because she worked outside her agreed times of work.

For information about on-call work see Employees covered by the Clerks Award and on-call work.