Waste Management Award pay rates 2026/27

Pick a classification, an employment type and when the hours fall. The calculator reads the same Fair Work pay guide figures as the tables further down this page, so the two can never drift apart.

Every rate below includes the $3.24 per hour industry allowance, exactly as Fair Work publishes it. Some rate sites strip the allowance out and quote a Level 1 entry rate of about $26.63 — that is the wrong base for this award, because clause 16.2(b) makes the industry allowance payable for all purposes, including overtime and shift rates.

If you collect, transport, sort, recycle, treat or dispose of waste anywhere in Australia, and your staff are not covered by an enterprise agreement, the Waste Management Award 2020 is almost certainly your award.

Three things make it unusual, and all three are rostering problems rather than payroll problems:

1. Classification is driven by what someone drives or operates, not by seniority. A driver moves up a level when the vehicle crosses a tonnage threshold.
2. Ordinary hours sit inside a narrow span — 4:00am to 5:00pm, Monday to Friday — so early starts are ordinary time but weekend and night work attract penalties.
3. Short notice changes what you owe. For shiftworkers, a shift given with less than 48 hours’ notice is paid at overtime rates rather than shift rates — the award prices the disruption rather than prohibiting it.

The Waste Management Award 2020 (MA000043) is the modern award covering the waste management industry across Australia. It sets minimum pay, hours, penalties, allowances and leave for employees in the classifications defined in clause 12.

It is a national instrument, so the same terms apply in every state and territory. Where a business has an enterprise agreement, that agreement applies instead — but it must leave employees better off overall than this award.

The award covers employers in the waste management industry and their employees in the classifications defined in clause 12. That includes kerbside and commercial collection, transfer stations, materials recovery and recycling facilities, landfill and incineration, liquid and septic waste, and skip and roll-on/roll-off hire.

It also reaches two arrangements that are easy to overlook:

• On-hire labour. A labour-hire employer supplying staff into the waste industry is covered in respect of those on-hire employees, where they fall in classifications this award covers.
• Group training. Employers providing group training services for trainees engaged in the waste industry are covered for those trainees.

Clause 12 and Schedule A set out nine levels. What separates them is almost entirely what the employee drives or operates — vehicle tonnage, plant horsepower, and whether the role includes instructing others. This is the single most consequential decision you make under this award, because everything else is calculated from the level.

Free waste management job description templates are available for the most common roles, each stating the level it sits at.

The award sets a minimum weekly rate for each of the nine levels, from which the hourly rate is derived. Casuals receive a loading on top of the ordinary hourly rate in place of paid leave. Junior employees are paid a percentage of the adult rate for their level — 70% under 19, 80% at 19, and the full adult rate from 20. Those percentages apply to the rate including the industry allowance, so a Level 1 employee under 19 is on $21.08 an hour. The Fair Work pay guide for this award publishes no apprentice rates.

Rates change on the first full pay period on or after 1 July each year, following the Fair Work Commission’s Annual Wage Review.

Full-time employees work an average of 38 ordinary hours a week. Ordinary hours fall between 4:00am and 5:00pm, Monday to Friday, to a maximum of 8 hours a day, worked continuously apart from meal breaks.

That early start matters. A 4:30am kerbside run is ordinary time, not overtime and not a night shift — a mistake that goes both ways, with operators either overpaying early starts or wrongly treating a genuine night shift as ordinary.

Rosters may be arranged over a four-week cycle, which is what allows rostered-day-off arrangements as an alternative to a flat five-day week.

The award defines separate penalty categories rather than one weekend rate. Which one applies depends on when the hours fall and whether the employee is a shift worker:

All percentages are of the ordinary hourly rate for the employee’s level — including the industry allowance. Multiply the Level 1 rate of $30.11, not a stripped-out base.

Allowances are where waste management payroll usually leaks, because most of them are paid per day or per week rather than per hour, and none of them appear on a timesheet by themselves.

Leave comes from the National Employment Standards, not the award, so it is the same here as in any other industry: four weeks’ paid annual leave a year for full-time employees (pro rata for part-time), 10 days’ paid personal/carer’s leave, and long service leave under the relevant state or territory law.

Casual employees do not accrue paid leave — the casual loading is paid instead. Casuals are entitled to unpaid carer’s leave, and to paid family and domestic violence leave on the same basis as everyone else.

Five steps, in the order that catches the most risk for the least effort.

List every vehicle and item of plant, note its tonnage or horsepower, and map each employee to the heaviest thing they are authorised to operate. Job titles like “driver” span four levels in this award.

Put 4:00am–5:00pm, Monday to Friday, somewhere your supervisors will see it. Most early-start disputes come from people assuming anything before 6am is penalty time.

Shiftworkers: 48 hours before a shift, or it is paid at overtime rates; 7 days before altering a shift roster. Everyone else: consult under clause 29 before changing a regular roster. If rosters go out by text or whiteboard you have no record of when notice was given, which is the problem — not the medium.

Because level follows vehicle, a shift swap onto a heavier truck can change the rate for that shift. Recording the vehicle against the shift is what makes that visible before payday.

Rates change from the first full pay period on or after 1 July. Download the new pay guide, update each level, and check the allowance amounts at the same time — they move too.

Levels 3 through 6, plus 9, are all drivers. Paying one rate to everyone with a licence underpays anyone on a heavier vehicle and is the most likely source of a back-pay claim in this industry.

The ordinary span opens at 4:00am. Early starts are ordinary hours unless the employee is engaged as a shift worker or the hours exceed the daily maximum.

The 7-day rule is about shift rosters (clause 20.2(c)). The 48-hour rule prices a late shift at overtime rates rather than banning it (clause 20.4(a)). And for a regular roster, the obligation is to consult under clause 29. Applying one of these three to all of them is how operators end up both over-cautious and non-compliant at once.

It is not triggered by a task or a day, so it never shows up as an exception in payroll — it is either configured or it is not. Worse, clause 16.2(a) makes it an all-purpose allowance, so missing it also understates every penalty rate and loading calculated from that employee’s rate.

The award treats those two separately from the rest. A single “public holiday” rule in payroll will underpay them.

The Waste Management Award is more tractable than it looks, because most of its complexity sits in one decision: which of the nine levels each employee belongs to, and that follows the vehicle.

Get classification right, know that ordinary hours start at 4:00am, respect the 48-hour and 7-day notice periods, and set up the industry allowance. Then confirm the current dollar figures against the Fair Work pay guide each July, per level — never from a rate you copied last year.