Seafood Processing Award

The first threshold question is whether the business is doing land based post harvest seafood processing or whether another industry award is more appropriate.

• The award is limited to land based post harvest seafood processing and related wholesale fish market work.
• It excludes several other food, retail and hospitality awards, so a seafood label alone is not enough.
• An employee employed on an oyster farm is expressly excluded.

You need to classify process attendants properly and review acting up duties, especially in plants where workers move between lines and more skilled tasks during the shift.

• The award uses four process attendant levels.
• If an employee performs higher duties for more than 2 hours in a day or shift, the higher minimum rate applies for the whole day or shift.
• If the higher duties last 2 hours or less, the higher rate applies only for the time actually worked at that higher level.

Seafood plants often mix day work and shiftwork. The payroll result changes depending on which system applies and whether the roster has been agreed correctly.

• Day workers can average up to 38 hours per week and not more than 152 hours in 28 days.
• For day workers, the ordinary spread is generally 6.00 am to 6.00 pm Monday to Saturday, with limited movement by agreement.
• Continuous and non continuous shiftworkers operate under separate rules, and rosters can average 38 ordinary hours over more than 28 days, up to 12 months, by majority agreement.
• Continuous shiftworkers have a paid meal break counted as time worked.

The common payroll traps are not the ordinary line rate, but overtime outside spread, cold room work and whether a meal allowance is actually triggered.

• Work outside the day work spread is paid at overtime rates.
• Employees working in places artificially reduced below zero degrees Celsius have a cold place allowance entitlement, and longer periods of cold place work trigger paid rest time.
• Meal allowance rules are tied to the overtime rest break framework and should be checked before payment is assumed.

Junior, trainee and averaging settings need their own payroll rules, especially where the plant uses variable rosters or mixed age workforces.

• Junior rates are calculated separately from adult minimum rates.
• The award also deals with absences where pay is averaged to avoid fluctuating wage payments.
• Trainees are covered through the national training wage provisions incorporated into the award.

Labour hire and training models can still sit inside this award where the hosted work is genuine seafood processing work.

• The award expressly covers on hire labour and group training trainees performing covered seafood processing work.
• Host businesses should not assume the labour arrangement removes the need to identify the correct award framework.

PR799280, PR799348, PR799504

The current consolidated award incorporates these recent variation determinations. Use the consolidated wording when checking any affected clause, schedule, rate or allowance.

Affected: 15 - Minimum rates, 17 - Allowances, Schedule A - Summary of Hourly Rates of Pay, Schedule B - Summary of Monetary Allowances, Schedule C - Supported Wage System