Casual loading or paid leave: what going permanent is really worth in hospitality

Your 25% casual loading is worth exactly $6.77 an hour if you're a Level 2 in a Sydney venue. Not 25% of your Sunday rate. Not 25% of your public holiday rate. $6.77 flat, on every hour you work, whether it's a Tuesday lunch or Christmas Day.

That one number decides the whole casual-versus-permanent question, and not one of the calculators ranking for it will show it to you. The employee choice pathway now puts the decision in front of every casual at six months (12 at a small business), so here's the year priced both ways on a real roster.

Short version: on a steady 34-hour hospitality roster, a Level 2 casual finishes the year about $5,570 ahead of the same person on part-time hours. But the permanent is paid for 52 weeks and the casual only for the weeks they actually work, so the casual has to turn up for 43 weeks out of 52 just to stay level. This is general information, not financial or legal advice.

Your loading is worth $6.77 an hour, whatever the day

Casual penalty rates in MA000009 have the loading baked in, and the award builds them by addition, not multiplication. A permanent's Sunday is 150% of base. A casual's Sunday is 175%. The difference is always those 25 percentage points of base, which on $27.08 an hour is $6.77.

Read that last column again. The loading is a headline 25% only on your quietest, worst-paid hours. On a public holiday it's 11%, because it's the same $6.77 sitting on a much bigger number. Build your week out of weekends and the loading is doing the least for you it will ever do. Rates are from the Fair Work Ombudsman pay guide, effective from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026. Not sure you're a Level 2? Check your classification first.

A casual's Saturday is a permanent's Sunday. A casual's Tuesday is a permanent's Saturday. Same $40.62, same $33.85, different contract.

A year on the same roster, priced both ways

Here's a shape that's everywhere in Sydney: a Level 2 doing 34 hours across five shifts, Wednesday to Sunday, at one venue for a year. The roster that makes you eligible in the first place, because there's nothing casual left about it.

The weekly gap is $230.18, which is just 34 hours times $6.77. Now run a year, and give both the same life: four weeks off and five sick days. The casual gets nothing for either. The permanent gets four weeks of paid annual leave plus the award's 17.5% loading, and paid personal leave.

The casual is $5,571 ahead, and 12% super widens it by roughly another $670. The reason sits in one line of that table: paid leave is paid at your base rate, not your rostered rate. This person averages $32.90 an hour. Their annual leave pays $27.08. Going permanent means your Sundays quietly vanish from the four weeks you spend at the beach.

The break-even is 43 weeks

That $5,571 isn't a prize for choosing correctly. It's compensation for risk, and the risk has a price. The permanent banks $57,822 whether trade is good or terrible. The casual banks $1,348.78 per week worked, so they need 42.9 weeks of the 52 to match it.

So your downtime budget is about nine weeks a year, covering the trip home, the flu, the fortnight the venue cuts you to one shift because January is dead, and the shift cancelled at 3pm. Sounds generous until you count last year honestly.

Public holidays are where it flips hardest

One clause almost nobody quotes. Under MA000009 clause 35.4, if a part-timer was rostered on a day that turns out to be a public holiday and is absent, the employer must pay them for the ordinary hours they were going to work. A casual on the same closed day gets nothing.

Work out which one your venue is. A CBD pub trading every public holiday going hands the casual an extra $54 a shift. A restaurant that shuts for Good Friday, Christmas, Boxing Day and Anzac Day hands the part-timer close to $900 a year for staying home. Your venue's public holiday habits matter more here than anything else on the roster.

The number to negotiate is your guaranteed hours

Everything above assumes you convert onto the same 34 hours. The award doesn't promise that. Clause 10.2 defines a part-time employee as someone engaged for at least 8 and fewer than 38 ordinary hours a week, so a venue can lawfully accept your notice and put you on eight.

Convert at eight after a year of doing 34 and you've traded $6.77 an hour for a floor 26 hours below where you were standing. That figure is the whole negotiation. Four things in clause 10 back you once it's written down.

• Guaranteed hours are guaranteed to be paid, not just offered. A quiet week is the venue's problem now, not yours.
• They can only be changed with your written consent. Nobody can quietly cut them the way a manager stops offering a casual any shifts.
• You can't be rostered outside your stated availability, and you must get two days off each week.
• After 12 months regularly working above them, you can ask in writing to have them raised, refusable only on reasonable business grounds.

Go in with a number, not a feeling. Pull your last six months of shifts, find your genuine weekly floor rather than your average, and ask for that. Guaranteed hours cut both ways, though: they lock in income, and they lock up your availability at the other place you work.

How to use the employee choice pathway

1. Check you're eligible. Six months of employment, or 12 months at a small business. Service before 26 August 2024 doesn't count.
2. Check you're not blocked. No notice if you're in an ongoing dispute, or if in the last six months your employer refused one or a dispute was resolved.
3. Put it in writing. The Fair Work Ombudsman publishes a free template. Say your hours are regular and ongoing, and attach the roster history that proves it.
4. Expect a conversation. They must consult you first: full-time or part-time, what hours, when it starts. This is where you name your guaranteed hours.
5. They have 21 days to accept or refuse, in writing. If accepted, it starts on the first day of your first full pay period after the response, unless you agree otherwise.
6. If refused, read the reason. Only three are allowed: you still meet the casual definition, fair and reasonable operational grounds, or a recruitment process required by law. Anything else can go to the Fair Work Commission.

Two honest caveats. Refusal on "fair and reasonable operational grounds" is genuinely broad. And this isn't a door to walk through lightly: you'll owe notice if you resign, and you lose the right to say no to a shift inside your stated availability.

Where Shiftly fits

Whichever side you land on, it turns on one thing: how many weeks a year you actually get paid for. Shiftly is free workforce management for Australian venues with an on-demand staffing network built in, so the roster fills itself instead of a manager ringing around at 4pm. For you that means nearby venues push open shifts straight to the network, you see the venue, the hours and the pay before you accept, and you get paid fast once it's done. Stay casual and that's how you defend the 43 weeks. Convert, and it's how you top up around your guaranteed hours. Find shifts on Shiftly.

Frequently asked questions

Is the 25% casual loading worth more than paid leave?

On these numbers, yes, by about $5,570 a year on a 34-hour roster, but only if you work close to a full year. The loading pays you for hours worked; paid leave pays you for hours not worked. The more time you lose to illness, travel or quiet trade, the faster the advantage disappears. On this roster the tipping point is roughly 43 of the 52 weeks.

How long do I have to be a casual before I can ask to go permanent?

Six months, or 12 months if your employer is a small business, counting only service from 26 August 2024 onwards. You also have to genuinely believe you no longer meet the casual definition, which broadly means there's now a firm advance commitment to ongoing work. A fixed roster you've worked for months, with shifts you're expected to take, is the clearest version of that.

Can my venue refuse to make me permanent?

Yes, but only in writing, within 21 days, and only on one of three grounds: you still meet the casual definition, there are fair and reasonable operational grounds, or accepting would breach a recruitment process required by law. Operational grounds cover substantial changes to how work is organised. If the reason doesn't hold, raise it at work first, then the Fair Work Commission.

Do I keep my casual loading after I convert?

No. The 25% exists precisely because casuals get no paid leave, no notice of termination and no redundancy pay, so it stops the day you become permanent. A Level 2 drops from $33.85 to $27.08 on a weekday and from $47.39 to $40.62 on a Sunday. One thing worth knowing: if a court later finds you were wrongly classified as a casual, the Fair Work Act lets an employer offset the loading already paid against a claim for those entitlements, so nobody collects twice.