Building and Construction Award pay guide: rates, penalties & classifications 2026/2027

Construction sites rely heavily on casual and labour-hire crews to scale up and down with the job. Here are the casual rates for ordinary weekday hours under the Building and Construction General On-site Award 2020 [MA000020] (weekly hire, general building, non-residential), generated from the current Fair Work pay guide:

If you only skim one section, make it this one:

• The Building and Construction General On-site Award 2020 [MA000020] sets minimum pay and conditions for employees doing on-site building, construction, civil and metal & engineering construction work in Australia — labourers, plant operators and building trades.
• The award splits into sectors (general building — residential vs non-residential — civil construction, and metal & engineering construction) and into daily-hire vs weekly-hire arrangements. The rates in this guide are the flagship set: weekly hire · general building · non-residential, which already include the all-purpose industry and tool allowances.
• Workers are classified on the CW/ECW 1–8 ladder (plus ECW 9): CW1 = construction/general labourer, CW3 = tradesperson (carpenter, bricklayer, painter, plasterer, tiler), up to CW8/ECW9 advanced.
• Adult ordinary rates run from $28.44/hr (CW1) to $36.71/hr (CW8) for a 38-hour week. Casuals add a 25% loading on top of these ordinary rates.
• On top of base rates you may also pay shift loadings (morning/early-afternoon +25%, afternoon/night +50%), weekend and public-holiday penalties (Saturday 150%/200%, Sunday 200%, public holiday 250%) and overtime (150% first 2 hours, 200% after).
• Get four things right for every worker: award coverage, sector + hire type, CW/ECW classification, and when they work (day, shift, weekend, public holiday, overtime).

Think of the Building and Construction General On-site Award (MA000020) as the legal minimum standard you can’t go below for covered on-site building and construction work.

It sets:

• Minimum hourly and weekly rates for the CW/ECW 1–8 classification ladder, across the general building, civil and metal & engineering construction sectors
• Extra pay for shift work, weekends, public holidays and overtime
• Allowances (the all-purpose industry and tool allowances, fares & travel, leading hand, first aid, multistorey, living-away-from-home and others)
• Rules about daily-hire and weekly-hire employment, casuals, apprentices, rostering, spans of hours and breaks
• A link into the National Employment Standards (NES) for leave and other basic rights

You can always pay more — and in commercial construction, many employers do via enterprise agreements and site rates — but you can’t legally pay less than the Award.

The Award is updated roughly every July after the Fair Work Commission’s Annual Wage Review. Your job as an employer is to work out whether your staff are covered, pick the right sector and hire type, classify them correctly, pay at least the Award minimum (including penalties, shift loadings and allowances), and update rates when the pay guide changes.

In simple terms, MA000020 covers employers and employees in the on-site building, engineering and civil construction industry across Australia. It commonly applies to:

• General building and construction — houses, apartments, offices, retail and commercial buildings (residential and non-residential)
• Civil construction — roads, bridges, earthworks, drainage, rail and other infrastructure
• Metal & engineering construction — on-site fabrication, erection and installation of structural steel and plant
• On-site trades and labour — carpenters, bricklayers, painters, plasterers, tilers, concreters, formworkers, riggers, scaffolders, plant operators and construction labourers

The single biggest coverage trap is on-site plumbing and electrical work — those trades have their own awards even when they’re working on the same building site (see below).

Once you’ve confirmed coverage, see our construction rostering software for how to build and cost on-site crew rosters with these rates applied automatically.

This is the distinction that trips up more builders than any other. Several trades work on the same site but are covered by different awards:

• Plumbing and Fire Sprinklers Award [MA000036] covers plumbers, gasfitters, drainers, roof plumbers and fire-sprinkler fitters — even on a building site.
• Electrical, Electronic and Communications Contracting Award [MA000025] covers electricians and electrical contracting work.
• Joinery and Building Trades Award [MA000029] covers off-site joinery, shopfitting and glass manufacture (a factory-based award, not on-site construction).
• Mobile Crane Hiring Award [MA000032] covers businesses whose main activity is hiring out mobile cranes with operators.

When in doubt, classify by the actual work and the employer’s main business, not the site the person happens to be standing on.

A quick side-by-side to place MA000020 against the awards it’s most often confused with.

MA000020 is unusual because a worker’s minimum rate depends not just on their classification but on which sector they work in and how they’re engaged. Get these two settings right before you read a rate off the pay guide.

The award sets separate rates for each sector:

• General building and construction — split again into residential and non-residential (commercial) work. The rates in this guide are the non-residential general-building set.
• Civil construction — roads, bridges, earthworks, drainage and other infrastructure.
• Metal & engineering construction — on-site structural steel fabrication, erection and plant installation.

The classification ladder (CW/ECW 1–8) is the same across the sectors, but the dollar figures differ. Use Fair Work’s PACT to confirm the exact rate for residential, civil or metal & engineering work.

The award also recognises two engagement types for permanent employees:

• Weekly hire — the standard ongoing engagement. The rates in this guide (and in the calculator) are weekly hire, and they already include the all-purpose industry allowance and (for trades) the tool allowance.
• Daily hire — a construction-specific arrangement where carpenters, bricklayers and some other trades are engaged and terminated on a daily basis (one day’s notice). Daily-hire employees receive an additional follow-the-job loading on top of the base rate to compensate for that insecurity, in place of some notice and redundancy entitlements.

Because the daily-hire follow-the-job loading changes the hourly figure, don’t apply the weekly-hire rates below to daily-hire employees — check the daily-hire column in the pay guide or PACT.

MA000020 classifies employees on a Construction Worker (CW) / Engineering Construction Worker (ECW) ladder from CW1 to CW8, with a parallel ECW9 for the most advanced engineering work. Classification is decided by actual skills and duties, not job title.

• CW1 – construction/general labourer and trades assistant. Has sub-levels a–d ($28.44–$29.82/hr) that step up with experience and tasks (e.g. safety/traffic control, use of tools).
• CW2 – experienced labourer, plant or equipment operator.
• CW3 – tradesperson: carpenter, joiner, bricklayer, painter, plasterer, tiler and similar. Trade variants run $31.48–$32.30/hr depending on the trade and tool allowance.
• CW4 – special-class trade (e.g. signwriter, joiner special class, letter cutter).
• CW5 – advanced special-class trade (e.g. refractory/special-class bricklayer, special-class plasterer).
• CW6–CW7 – advanced and higher engineering construction workers.
• CW8 – top construction worker (e.g. carpenter-diver), with ECW9 ($36.23/hr) for the most advanced engineering construction work.

The full FY2026/27 rate table (with weekly and hourly figures per level) is in the next section, and every level is built into the calculator above.

This section is a practical snapshot of the current FY2026/27 minimum rates so you can sanity-check payroll. All figures are minimums from the official Fair Work pay guide (weekly hire · general building · non-residential) effective from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, and are generated from the same data that powers the calculator above. These rates include the all-purpose industry and tool allowances. Residential, civil, metal & engineering and daily-hire rates differ — use PACT.

For adult employees, ordinary hours (based on a 38-hour week), weekly hire, general building, non-residential:

Casuals receive the same base rate plus a 25% casual loading in place of paid leave. Adult casual rates for ordinary weekday hours:

Apprentice rates depend on the year of the apprenticeship and, for those who started on or after 1 January 2014, on whether they completed Year 12. Indicative FY2026/27 rates for a 4-year apprenticeship (non-residential, started on or after 1 January 2014) are:

• 1st year: around $16.49/hr (did not complete Year 12) or $17.96/hr (completed Year 12)
• 2nd year: around $19.44/hr (no Year 12) or $20.91/hr (Year 12)
• 3rd year: around $23.85/hr
• 4th year: around $28.27/hr

Because the exact figure depends on the sector, start date, year of apprenticeship and Year 12 status, always confirm the precise rate via Fair Work’s PACT or the current pay guide. Apprentices are also entitled to the daily fares & travel allowance (at their year’s rate).

Most on-site construction work is done by adults and apprentices, but where junior (under-18) rates apply the award sets them as a percentage of the relevant adult rate. Match age, sector and classification against the Fair Work pay guide before paying a junior.

The Award works alongside the national definitions of full-time, part-time and casual employment — plus the construction-specific daily-hire and weekly-hire arrangements covered above.

• Full-time is generally an average of 38 ordinary hours per week.
• Part-time employees work fewer, regular hours with an agreed pattern.
• Both accrue paid annual leave and personal/carer’s leave under the NES (pro-rata for part-time), whether engaged as daily hire or weekly hire.

• No firm advance commitment to ongoing work with an agreed pattern.
• Paid a 25% casual loading instead of paid leave.
• Common for filling short-term labour and trade gaps as jobs ramp up and wind down.

Before you build a roster, it pays to know the award’s hours rules:

• Ordinary hours average 38 per week, worked Monday to Friday within the ordinary span.
• Ordinary hours are typically worked as a fixed daily pattern agreed for the site.
• Work outside the ordinary span, or beyond the daily/weekly limit, is overtime.
• Work on Saturday, Sunday and public holidays attracts penalty rates (below), even when it’s part of a normal working week.

Where the award’s shift-work provisions apply, ordinary-hours shift work is loaded as follows:

• Morning shift and early-afternoon shift – +25% loading.
• Afternoon shift, night shift and early-morning shift – +50% loading.

Shift loadings are roster-based and depend on when the shift starts and finishes, so they’re applied from the roster rather than the calculator’s weekend/public-holiday settings. Confirm the shift definitions in the award before applying them.

Weekend and overtime work is where the real cost — and most underpayment risk — sits. The key rules under MA000020:

• Saturday: the first 2 hours are paid at 150%, then 200%.
• Sunday: work is paid at 200%.
• Public holidays: 250%.
• Saturday after Good Friday: 250%.
• Overtime (Mon–Fri): 150% for the first 2 hours, 200% after.

These multipliers are applied to the ordinary hourly rate for the worker’s classification, sector and hire type.

Overtime is triggered when an employee works beyond their ordinary rostered hours or outside the agreed span. On a busy site with lots of last-minute changes, overtime — not base rates — is where costs blow out. See our guide to calculating overtime costs, or model weekend and overtime rates with our overtime penalty rate calculator.

Beyond hourly pay and penalties, MA000020 includes some of the most-used allowances of any award — especially fares & travel (paid to most on-site workers) and leading hand. The all-purpose industry and tool allowances are already built into the base rates above. Current FY2026/27 amounts:

The Award sits on top of the National Employment Standards (NES), which set minimum leave for permanent employees (weekly hire and daily hire alike).

Permanent employees are entitled to, among other things:

• Paid annual leave – 4 weeks per year based on ordinary hours, paid with 17.5% leave loading.
• Paid personal/carer’s leave (sick leave) – 10 days per year based on ordinary hours.
• Compassionate leave, parental leave, family and domestic violence leave, and other NES entitlements.

• No paid annual or personal/carer’s leave.
• Instead, they receive the 25% casual loading.

Always check current entitlements against the Award and NES, or seek advice for complex rosters and daily-hire arrangements.

A simple process you can actually follow.

• Confirm the work is on-site building, civil or metal & engineering construction covered by MA000020 — and not plumbing (MA000036), electrical (MA000025), off-site joinery or crane hire.
• Check whether a registered enterprise agreement applies — if so, its terms generally replace the Award (but must beat it on the BOOT).

For each worker, decide the sector (general building residential vs non-residential, civil, or metal & engineering) and the hire type (weekly hire or daily hire, which adds the follow-the-job loading). These set which pay-guide column you read.

Assign each worker a CW/ECW level based on their actual skills and duties — CW1 labourer through CW3 tradesperson to CW8/ECW9 advanced — not just their job title.

• Enter the correct base rate per classification, sector and hire type, and configure the fares & travel, leading hand, first aid, multistorey and living-away-from-home allowances so they’re easy to apply.

Use Fair Work’s PACT each pay run, or use award-interpreting rostering/payroll software with payroll integration that understands the Building & Construction Award and calculates weekend/public-holiday penalties, shift loadings and overtime automatically from the roster and timesheets.

Keep rosters, timesheets, pay records and contracts, and capture exact start and finish times with time and attendance tools. Make sure payslips clearly show ordinary hours, penalties, shift loadings, overtime and allowances.

The traps that trip up construction employers most often.

Paying on-site plumbers or electricians CW trade rates instead of their own awards is the most common, costly error on a mixed site. Classify by the actual work, not the site.

Applying non-residential rates to residential work, or weekly-hire rates to daily-hire employees (who are owed the follow-the-job loading), understates pay.

The daily fares & travel allowance is owed to most on-site workers for every day worked — it’s easy to miss and adds up fast across a crew.

The industry, tool, electrician’s licence and multistorey allowances are all-purpose — they must be in the base before penalties and overtime. Treating them as flat add-ons understates penalty pay.

Paying flat rates for Saturday, Sunday and overtime — especially the Saturday 150%-then-200% step — is a frequent source of backpay claims.

Still paying last year’s rates. Download the new pay guide every July and compare it to your payroll.

Applying the Building and Construction Award correctly is a legal requirement — but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming:

• Confirm coverage first: on-site construction (MA000020) vs plumbing, electrical, off-site joinery and crane hire — and check for an enterprise agreement.
• Pick the sector and hire type: general building (residential/non-residential), civil or metal & engineering, and weekly vs daily hire (which adds the follow-the-job loading).
• Classify correctly: the right CW/ECW level based on skills and duties.
• Don’t ignore penalties, shift loadings and allowances: this is where most underpayments happen. You can estimate weekend and overtime costs before you publish a roster.
• Update every July and keep good records.

For official guidance, see the Building and Construction General On-site Award [MA000020] on Fair Work, the Fair Work pay guide and PACT.