Do Casuals Get Overtime Under SCHADS? And Is Overtime Exempt From Super?

Clause 28.1(b) of the SCHADS Award deals with part-time and casual employees together, and sets out three separate thresholds. Any one of them triggers overtime:

• Weekly / fortnightly (clause 28.1(b)(i)) — all time worked in excess of 38 hours per week or 76 hours per fortnight is paid at time and a half for the first 2 hours and double time thereafter. On Sundays that overtime is double time; on public holidays, double time and a half.
• Daily (clause 28.1(b)(ii)) — all time worked which exceeds 10 hours per day or per shift is paid at time and a half for the first 2 hours and double time thereafter, with the same Sunday and public holiday substitutions.
• Sleepover-adjacent (clause 28.1(b)(iii)) — where part of a shift is worked immediately before and part immediately after a sleepover, the daily threshold lifts from 10 hours to 12 hours. This only applies if the employee and employer have agreed to a 12-hour shift structured that way (clause 28.1(b)(iv)), and even then a maximum of 8 ordinary hours may be worked before or after the sleepover period.

Clause 28.1(b)(v) makes the corollary explicit: time worked up to those daily thresholds is not overtime, and is paid at the ordinary rate of pay — including the casual loading for casuals. So a casual working a 9-hour day has not worked overtime; a casual working an 11-hour day has worked one hour of it.

There is also a span-of-hours trigger. Under clause 28.1(b)(vi), all time worked outside the span of hours by part-time and casual day workers is paid at overtime rates.

This is the single most-asked version of the question, and the answer for a casual or part-time employee is yes: clause 28.1(b)(i) is a hard threshold at 38 hours in a week.

But note the wording — 38 hours per week or 76 hours per fortnight. Providers who roster fortnightly frequently ask whether a week of 42 hours followed by a week of 32 hours escapes overtime because the fortnight totals 74. Read the clause carefully: the two measures are alternatives, and exceeding either one triggers the entitlement. Four hours of overtime were worked in that first week, and a light second week does not retrospectively absorb them.

The daily threshold stacks independently. A casual can work well under 38 hours in a week and still be owed overtime because a single day ran past 10 hours. Both tests need to run over every pay period, not just the one that looks riskiest.

Full-time overtime works differently, and the stream matters. Under clause 28.1(a), a full-time employee is paid overtime for all work done in addition to their rostered ordinary hours on any day or shift, and for day workers, work outside the span of hours in clause 25.2(a):

• Disability services, home care and day care employees — time and a half for the first 2 hours, double time thereafter, Monday to Saturday (clause 28.1(a)(i)).
• Social and community services and crisis accommodation employees — time and a half for the first 3 hours, double time thereafter, Monday to Saturday (clause 28.1(a)(ii)).
• Sunday — double time (clause 28.1(a)(iii)).
• Public holiday — double time and a half (clause 28.1(a)(iv)).

That 2-hours-versus-3-hours difference between streams is a real and frequently missed distinction — one more reason the stream a worker sits in is not a paperwork detail.

A trap that produces overpayments as often as underpayments. Overtime rates are in substitution for, and not cumulative upon, other loadings:

• For full-time employees, clause 28.1(a)(v) states overtime rates substitute for the shift premiums in clause 29 (Shiftwork) and the Saturday and Sunday premiums in clause 26.
• For part-time and casual employees, clause 28.1(b)(vii) states overtime rates substitute for the clause 29 shift premiums and are not applicable to ordinary hours worked on a Saturday or Sunday.

So a casual working ordinary hours on a Saturday is paid the Saturday rate, not an overtime rate — the weekend penalty is not overtime. Overtime only enters once one of the clause 28.1(b) thresholds is crossed, and when it does, it replaces the shift premium rather than sitting on top of it. This is different from allowances such as the broken shift allowance, which do stack.

Generally yes — overtime payments are not ordinary time earnings (OTE), and super guarantee is calculated on OTE. That is the answer most people are looking for.

But the exemption is conditional in a way that matters for this industry. Under the ATO's ruling on the meaning of OTE (SGR 2009/2), payments for work performed outside an employee's ordinary hours of work are not OTE — provided the overtime amounts are distinctly identifiable. Where you cannot distinctly identify the overtime, all the hours actually worked are treated as ordinary hours, and super is payable on the lot.

That condition is the whole ball game for SCHADS payroll:

• If your timesheets and payslips show overtime as its own line, at its own rate, it is distinctly identifiable and the exemption applies.
• If overtime hours are folded into a single "hours worked" figure at a blended rate, or paid as an untagged top-up, you may not be able to distinguish them — and the safe conclusion is that super is payable across the whole amount.

An employee's "ordinary hours of work" are the hours specified as ordinary hours under the relevant award or agreement. SCHADS specifies them, which is what makes the separation possible in the first place — but only if your payroll data actually preserves it.

Worth noting separately: this is an overtime answer, not a general allowance answer. Whether super attaches to sleepover allowances, on-call allowances or kilometre payments is a different question with different reasoning for each, and should be confirmed against the ATO's list of payments that are OTE rather than assumed to follow the overtime rule.

Sleepovers change the daily overtime threshold, and this is where the biggest calculation errors live. The default is 10 hours (clause 28.1(b)(ii)). Where a part-time or casual worker performs part of a shift immediately before and part immediately after a sleepover, clause 28.1(b)(iii) lifts the threshold to 12 hours — but only under the conditions in clause 28.1(b)(iv):

• The employee and employer must have agreed the employee will perform a 12-hour shift structured with work before and after the sleepover.
• A maximum of 8 ordinary hours may be worked before or after the sleepover period.

Without that agreement, the threshold stays at 10 hours and the shift will generate overtime sooner than a provider assuming the 12-hour rule expects. Note too that the work before and after the sleepover is treated as part of the same shift — it is not two separate engagements you can total independently. For the surrounding rules see our 2026 sleepover changes guide and the sleepover rules reference.

Run these four questions over your last pay run:

1. Do you test the daily threshold at all? Many payroll setups only test weekly hours. A casual with an 11-hour day inside a 30-hour week is owed overtime that a weekly-only test will never surface.
2. Are you testing weekly and fortnightly? Exceeding either measure triggers clause 28.1(b)(i).
3. Is overtime a distinct line in payroll? If not, you have an OTE problem as well as an award problem.
4. Do you have written agreements for 12-hour sleepover-adjacent shifts? Without them the threshold is 10 hours, not 12.

CrossVault's Timesheet Validator applies all three clause 28.1(b) thresholds per employee per period — daily, weekly and fortnightly — and flags the shifts where the sleepover-adjacent 12-hour threshold has been assumed without an agreement on file.

If you are casual and you worked more than 38 hours in a week, more than 76 in a fortnight, or more than 10 hours in a single day, some of those hours should be paid at time and a half or double time rather than at your ordinary casual rate. Clause 28.1(b)(v) keeps the 25% loading on the hours below the thresholds; how the loading interacts with the overtime rate itself is set by the rate tables, so check your overtime line against the current Fair Work Ombudsman pay guide for your classification rather than assuming either treatment. What should not happen is overtime hours disappearing into a single blended figure at your ordinary rate — it should appear as its own line. Upload a payslip to our free payslip check and it will verify your rates against the current SCHADS minimums, line by line.