About the Sick Pay Guarantee

The Sick Pay Guarantee provides eligible casual and contract workers in Victoria with sick and carer’s pay.

Sick and carer’s pay for casual and contract workers

Sign up today, before you get sick. You must be signed up before you can claim sick and carer’s pay.

About the program

The Sick Pay Guarantee is an Australian-first initiative giving Victorian casual and contract workers in certain jobs up to 38 hours a year of sick and carer’s pay. Payments are made at the national minimum wage.

The Sick Pay Guarantee is a pilot program, fully funded by the Victorian Government. It will run for three years from 14 March 2022 until 13 March 2025.

For more information see the Sick Pay Guarantee Program Guidelines.

About casual and contract workers

The Sick Pay Guarantee is for eligible casual and contract workers who do not have paid annual, personal, sick or carer’s leave entitlements in any job.

About casual workers

A person is a casual worker if they accept a job offer from an employer knowing that there is no firm advance commitment to ongoing work with an agreed pattern of work.

Specifically, under the Fair Work Act, a person is a casual worker if:

  • they are offered a job
  • the offer does not include a firm advance commitment that the work will continue indefinitely with an agreed pattern of work
  • they accept the offer knowing that there is no firm advance commitment and become an employee.

For more information, visit the Fair Work website.

About contract workers

Contract workers provide services under a contract and can work for more than one client at a time. Contract workers are also called self-employed workers, independent contractors, contractors or subcontractors.

For more information, visit the Fair Work website.

The difference between casual and contract workers

Contractors have different rights and obligations to casual employees. This is because they provide services to another person or business, as opposed to being employed by that person or business.

How eligible jobs were chosen for inclusion in the Sick Pay Guarantee

The Sick Pay Guarantee pilot focuses on the industries with some of the highest rates of casual and contract workers who do not have access to sick pay, whose work hours are often unpredictable and low paid, and where people who are more likely to experience hardship are overrepresented, such as people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, women and young people.

A consultation process with workers, unions, business and industry groups was undertaken in 2021 to inform the design of the Sick Pay Guarantee. For more information see the Public Consultation Summary Report.

How to share your experience of insecure work

When evaluating this pilot program, it is important to understand workers’ and employers’ experience of insecure work and the Sick Pay Guarantee.

You can share your experience on the contact us page or by emailing sickpayguarantee@ecodev.vic.gov.au

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