Opening on Labour Day, 5 October: the covers a Sydney venue needs to break even without a card surcharge

A Level 2 casual is paid $67.70 an hour on Labour Day, exactly double the $33.85 they get on a normal Monday daytime shift. This year Labour Day falls on Monday 5 October, four days after card surcharges end, so it's also the first public holiday where you can't pass your card fees on.

Most of what's written about public holiday surcharges argues whether 10% or 15% is fair. This does the maths instead: a small Sydney cafe and a small bar, priced at award rates, and the covers each needs just to pay for its Labour Day roster with no surcharge, 10% and 15%.

Quick answer: our all-casual cafe roster costs $2,513 in wages and super on Labour Day and needs 135 covers to pay for itself with no surcharge, 118 with a 10% surcharge and 111 with 15%. The same roster needs 68 on an ordinary Monday. Our small bar needs 94, 83 and 78, against 48. Losing the card surcharge moves those targets by two or three covers. Penalty rates move them by 46 to 67. This is general information, not financial or legal advice.

What 1 October changes, and what it leaves alone

From 1 October 2026, eftpos, Mastercard and Visa are all bringing in no-surcharge rules for debit, credit and prepaid cards, and American Express has said it will do the same. The Reserve Bank is clear about the scope: the changes only apply to surcharges added because a customer pays by card, not to weekend or public holiday surcharges, booking fees or service fees. The ACCC says the same.

So a Labour Day surcharge is still yours to charge, as long as you disclose it properly. For restaurants and cafes that means these words on the menu, at least as prominent as the most prominent price on it: A surcharge of 15% applies on public holidays. The exemption behind that rule covers a business "commonly known as a restaurant, cafe, bistro or any similar term". If you run a bar and aren't sure you fit, the ACCC's general rule is that a displayed price includes every unavoidable fee, so build the surcharge into a separate public holiday price list instead. The maths below works either way.

Labour Day doubles a casual, and does something odder to a part-timer

For casuals it's a straight doubling, 250% against 125%, and the Restaurant Industry Award (MA000119), which covers standalone cafes, prints the same dollar figures as MA000009 for these levels. Part-timers look cheaper at 225%, but their jump is bigger: 2.25 times base, not 2. The twist is what happens if you close. A permanent employee who normally works Mondays gets their base rate for those ordinary hours anyway, so putting your Level 2 part-timer on the floor only costs you an extra $33.85 an hour before super, which is what a casual costs on a normal Monday. Our guide to who gets paid what on a public holiday covers the rest.

Two small Sydney venues, priced out

• Cafe: trades 7am to 3pm at $30 a head including GST, with food and drink costing 30% of sales. A standalone cafe sits under MA000119.
• Bar: trades noon to about 10pm at $40 a head including GST, with drinks and food costing 25% of sales. MA000009 names wine bars and taverns, so it covers this one. Its ordinary Monday includes the $2.95 evening loading on the 8 hours worked after 7pm, which doesn't stack on top of the public holiday rate, so the bar's bill rises by a little less than double.
• Card fees: every sale goes on a card at 1.4%, the Reserve Bank's average for a small business on a single-rate plan. Small merchants on unblended plans averaged 0.9%, yet only 19% of them use one, which makes it a phone call worth making.
• What counts: only the costs you take on by opening, which are wages plus 12% super, food and drink, and card fees. Rent is paid whether you open or not. Workers comp, payroll tax, power and gas would push every number up a little. The owner works the pass for free, as owners do.

The break-even covers

Break-even covers are your Labour Day wages and super divided by what one cover leaves after GST, food and drink, and card fees, so swap in your own numbers. A $30 cafe cover leaves $18.67, or $22.70 with a 15% surcharge. A $40 bar cover leaves $26.71, or $32.08 with 15%.

Read down the cafe column. A 15% surcharge takes 24 covers off the Labour Day target, and the day still needs 43 more than a normal Monday. At 135 covers, 15% pays for about 43% of what penalty rates added to the wage bill, and 10% for about 29%. The bar tells the same story on a smaller scale.

Losing the card surcharge costs the cafe three covers on Labour Day. The penalty rates cost it 67.

A rule of thumb worth keeping: on an all-casual roster, the surcharge that would make a public holiday as profitable as a normal day on the same covers is a touch more than your wages and super as a share of that day's sales, ex GST. If wages normally run at 30%, that's a surcharge of about 30.5%. Nobody charges that, so the gap has to come from trade. Our labour cost percentage guide shows where a healthy Sydney venue usually sits.

Before you open: five checks

1. Pull last year's Labour Day from your POS, covers by the hour, with King's Birthday (Monday 8 June) beside it. This year's falls in the NSW spring school holidays (28 September to 9 October) and the day after daylight saving starts, so trade may not look like a typical public holiday.
2. Price every hour against your margin. A Level 2 casual hour costs $75.82 with super on Labour Day, about four covers at the cafe's margin. Cutting one floor shift from 7.5 to 5 hours takes 10 covers off the target.
3. Roster Monday part-timers before casuals, because you're paying their base rate anyway. Ask early: staff can refuse a public holiday on reasonable grounds, and the notice you gave is part of what decides whether your request was reasonable.
4. Trade the peak, not the clock. A casual who works a public holiday is paid for at least 2 hours and a part-timer at least 4, so a 90-minute top-up shift is dearer than it looks.
5. Put the words on the menu before the doors open. On our numbers a 15% surcharge still beats no surcharge unless it costs you roughly one customer in six.

Where Shiftly fits

The break-even line only helps if you can see it while the roster is still a draft. Shiftly is the roster that fills itself: free rostering and award-aware timesheets with an on-demand staffing network built in. Build the Labour Day roster and the calculation tools help you estimate each shift at the public holiday rate before you publish, so the fifth hour gets trimmed before it's paid for. And if a casual pulls out on Sunday night, you don't have to ring around: post the open shift to the network from the same roster, and nearby hospitality workers see the venue, the hours and the pay before they accept. Get started with Shiftly.

Frequently asked questions

Is Labour Day a public holiday in NSW in 2026?

Yes. Labour Day is Monday 5 October 2026, one of the standard statewide public holidays under the NSW Public Holidays Act 2010, and in 2027 it falls on Monday 4 October. A casual who works it is paid 250% of the ordinary hourly rate under both the Hospitality and Restaurant awards, and a full-time or part-time employee 225%.

Can I still charge a public holiday surcharge after 1 October 2026?

Yes. The 1 October changes only stop surcharges for paying by card on eftpos, Mastercard, Visa and American Express, and both the Reserve Bank and the ACCC say they don't touch weekend or public holiday surcharges. Restaurants and cafes still have to show the words "A surcharge of [percentage] applies on [day or days]" on the menu, at least as prominently as the most prominent price.

Is it worth opening on a public holiday?

Only if your realistic covers clear the line your roster sets. On an all-casual roster the wage bill doubles and a 10% or 15% surcharge claws back only part of it: our cafe needs 135 covers with no surcharge and 111 with 15%, against 68 on a normal Monday. Closing isn't free either, because permanent staff who'd normally work that day are still paid for their ordinary hours. If last year's Labour Day cleared your line comfortably, open. If it didn't, price a shorter day built around the peak before you decide.