Hospitality Industry Award Pay Guide - Evening Rates, Split Shifts and Weekends

The Hospitality Industry (General) Award (MA000009, commonly called the HIGA) covers pubs, restaurants, cafes, clubs, and hotels. For workers doing split shifts, late nights, and weekend service, the award has several provisions that payroll systems consistently misapply. Understanding them is the first step to knowing whether you’re being paid correctly.

For the full award text and current rates, refer to the Fair Work Commission. Annual wage review decisions update base rates each year.

Evening and late-night penalty rates

The HIGA prescribes penalty loadings for hours worked outside standard daytime windows. The two key penalty periods are:

• Evening hours: hours worked between 7 pm and midnight, Monday to Friday
• Early morning hours: hours worked between midnight and 7 am

These are per-hour loadings applied on top of your ordinary rate for time worked within those windows. A dinner service shift that starts at 5 pm and finishes at 1 am should show three segments on your payslip: 5 pm to 7 pm at ordinary rates, 7 pm to midnight at the evening loading, and midnight to 1 am at the early-morning loading. If your payslip shows the whole shift at a single rate, at least part of it is wrong.

Split shift allowance

A split shift is where you work two or more separate periods in a day with an unpaid break between them — for example, a lunch service and a dinner service with time off in between. Under the HIGA, you’re entitled to a split shift allowance for each day you work this pattern. The allowance amount varies depending on the length of the break:

• For breaks of less than three hours: one allowance amount
• For breaks of three hours or more: a different allowance amount

The split shift allowance is paid in addition to your ordinary rates for the hours worked — it’s not included in your hourly rate. If you regularly work split shifts and the allowance doesn’t appear on your payslip, it hasn’t been paid.

Weekend rates

Saturday and Sunday attract penalty loadings under the HIGA. Saturday rates apply to all hours worked on Saturday; Sunday rates to all hours worked on Sunday. A shift that starts Saturday night and runs into Sunday morning should show two rates: Saturday rate up to midnight, Sunday rate after. A single Saturday rate applied to the whole shift underpays the Sunday portion.

Part-time overtime

Full-time overtime is triggered at 38 ordinary hours per week. Part-time workers accrue overtime differently: once you exceed your agreed contracted hours for the week, those additional hours attract overtime rates. If your contracted hours are 20 per week and you regularly work 25, the additional five hours should be at overtime rates — not at your ordinary rate because 25 hours is below the full-time threshold.

This is a common and costly error for part-time hospitality workers who are frequently asked to stay later or cover additional shifts. Check your contract for your agreed hours and verify that any hours beyond them are showing at overtime rates.

Checking your hospitality payslip

A correct HIGA payslip for a typical hospitality worker will have multiple rate lines: ordinary hours, an evening loading for late service, a split shift allowance if applicable, and potentially different weekend rates. If you’re seeing one or two lines on your payslip regardless of what you actually worked, the breakdown isn’t there and you can’t verify the figure.

Shift It’s Pay Check supports the Hospitality Industry (General) Award and handles the evening and midnight rate boundaries automatically. Each shift is split at the rate-change times, the correct loading applied to each segment, and the result compared against your payslip. If a split shift allowance or the wrong weekend rate was missed, it shows up in the comparison.