The question casuals actually ask is "do I get paid for the public holiday", and the honest answer has two halves that point in opposite directions. If you are not rostered, the Fair Work Act gives you nothing at all. If you are rostered and you work it, you are usually paid better than a permanent colleague standing next to you. This guide sets out both, with the statutory wording, because this is one of the few areas where the law is blunt and widely misreported.
Key takeaways
- A casual who is not rostered on a public holiday is paid nothing for it. That is the Act working as intended, not an underpayment.
- Everything a casual gets on a public holiday comes from the award penalty rate for hours actually worked.
- The 25% casual loading is additive, not compounding. On a 225% award the casual rate is 250%, not 281.25%.
- Casuals still have the section 114 right to be absent, and can still refuse an unreasonable request to work.
- Casuals do not accrue paid annual leave, so section 89(1) never applies to them.
The NES pays a casual nothing
Section 116 of the Fair Work Act pays an absent employee their base rate for their ordinary hours of work on the public holiday. A casual who is not rostered has no ordinary hours on that day, so the section produces a payment of zero. The Act says so explicitly rather than leaving it to inference:
"If the employee does not have ordinary hours of work on the public holiday, the employee is not entitled to payment under this section. For example, the employee is not entitled to payment if the employee is a casual employee who is not rostered on for the public holiday..."
This is not a gap or an oversight. It reflects the trade at the centre of casual employment: you take no paid leave and no guaranteed hours, and you are compensated with a 25% loading on every hour you do work. Our casual versus permanent guide works through the rest of that trade.
If you are rostered and you work it
Now the position reverses. A casual who works a public holiday is paid the award's public holiday rate for casuals, which is the permanent rate plus the casual loading. On most awards that is a very good day.
Twenty-five of the 33 awards on this site pay full-time and part-time employees 250% for public holiday hours, so the casual figure is typically 275%. On the five awards at 225%, which are Fast Food, Hospitality, General Retail, Restaurant and Pharmacy, the casual figure is 250%. Those five are exactly the awards where most casual public holiday shifts are worked, so the 250% number is the one most casuals will actually see.
Casual loading is additive, not compounding
This is the calculation error that costs people money, in both directions. The 25% casual loading is added to the penalty percentage, not multiplied by it.
On a 225% award, the casual public holiday rate is 225 + 25 = 250%. It is not 225% x 1.25 = 281.25%. On a $27.81 base rate that is the difference between $62.57 and $70.39 an hour, so getting it wrong by compounding overstates the entitlement by nearly $8 an hour.
Verified against General Retail MA000004 clause 22, where the casual column sits exactly 25 percentage points above the full-time and part-time column on every row, and the award's own Note 2 states the casual rates were calculated by adding the casual loading to the relevant penalty. Schedule B confirms the arithmetic: $27.81 x 2.25 = $62.57.
A handful of awards do compound, so check yours on the award pages before relying on the additive rule. The public holiday pay calculator applies the correct rule per award.
Can a casual refuse the shift
Yes, on the same footing as anyone else. Section 114(1) gives every national system employee the right to be absent on a public holiday, and it does not carve casuals out. An employer may request that you work, the request must be reasonable, and you may refuse if the request is unreasonable or your refusal is reasonable.
Section 114(4) lists eight factors that must be weighed, including the nature of the workplace, your personal circumstances and family responsibilities, how much notice you were given, and whether you receive penalty rates reflecting an expectation of holiday work. In practice a casual paid 250% for the day is more likely to be found to have been reasonably asked, because that penalty is one of the listed factors.
What differs for casuals is not the right but the consequence. There is no guaranteed roster to return to, which is a commercial reality rather than a legal one.
Casuals and annual leave
Casual employees do not accrue paid annual leave under the NES, so section 89(1), which stops a public holiday from consuming a day of annual leave, has nothing to operate on. There is no balance to protect.
Long service leave is the exception worth knowing about, because it is state law rather than federal, and several states do count long-serving regular casuals. Our pro-rata long service leave guide covers where that lands.
Common questions
I am a regular casual who always works Mondays. Do I get paid for a Monday public holiday?
Not under section 116, because a casual has no ordinary hours in the sense the section requires, however regular the pattern looks. If you are rostered and you work it, you are paid the casual public holiday penalty for those hours. If the business closes and you are not rostered, you are paid nothing. A genuinely regular, systematic pattern may point to you being something other than a casual in substance, which is a separate question covered in casual versus permanent.
Does the 25% casual loading still apply on a public holiday?
Yes, but added to the penalty rather than compounded with it, unless your specific award says otherwise.
My employer closed on the public holiday and cancelled my shift. Am I owed anything?
Under the NES, no. Some awards contain minimum engagement or cancellation provisions that can apply where a rostered shift is cancelled at short notice, so it is worth checking your award rather than assuming.
Is a casual paid more than a permanent on a public holiday?
For the hours worked, usually yes, by the 25 percentage points of casual loading. Across the year the permanent employee is ahead, because they also get paid public holidays they do not work, four weeks of paid annual leave, and paid personal leave.
Author & reviewer
Sarah has spent over a decade advising Australian SMBs on Fair Work, NES compliance, and payroll. Based in Sydney, she has worked across hospitality, retail and professional services.