Graphic Arts, Printing and Publishing Award
Covers commercial printing, packaging, screen printing, photographic processing, book and magazine publishing, and newspaper offices. Three sectors share the same Levels 1-8 base rates but have different penalty / overtime / shift-loading regimes - general (most printing), daily newspaper (with the unusual per-shift + per-hour Saturday structure), and non-daily newspaper.
Fully built. Rates, allowances, penalties and any required apprentice / junior rates are all wired to the rate resolver and have been verified against the consolidated award text and the latest pay guide.
Official Fair Work rates. This award’s minimum pay rates are synced directly from the Fair Work Commission’s Modern Awards Pay Database and updated automatically when the Commission changes them - including the annual wage review - so payroll always uses the current legal minimums without a manual update.
What's built
- All 8 cl. 17 classifications across the three sectors - 24 classification rate rows.
- Junior rates rewritten per cl. 18.2 / 18.3 / 18.4 - three distinct schedules anchored on Levels 2 / 3 / 4 (replacing the previously fabricated 50/60/70/80/90% scale on L1).
- Apprentice rates corrected - 72.5 / 87.5%, year-12 branch and adult-apprentice scale (82 / 87 / 92 / 100% of L5).
- All cl. 26 allowances (VDT $53.42/wk, inserting $32.05/wk, three apprentice-proficiency tiers, daily / non-daily night-work allowances) plus corrected first-aid and meal-OT figures.
- Daily-newspaper Saturday composite - eight per-shift attendance fees (one per Level) plus an hourly weekend penalty for the per-hour-worked component.
- Common-across-sectors penalties: less-than-10-hour-break 200%, work-after-6-days-without-36h-break 200%, call-back 200%, and morning / afternoon / night Mon-Fri shift loadings (120% / 130% non-rotating).
- Casual minimum engagement corrected to 4 hours with newspaper variants; shiftworker weekend rates 220 / 230% added.
Known limitations
No outstanding gaps at this revision - re-verify on the next Fair Work pay-guide release.
Setup & special instructions
- Each employee must be assigned a sector - general, daily_newspaper, or non_daily_newspaper - to drive the right penalty / OT regime.
- Daily-newspaper Saturday work uses a composite '$X per shift attendance + $Y per hour worked' structure (cl. 13.7(d)(ii)). The per-shift component is a sector-scoped allowance per Level; the per-hour component runs through the weekend penalty row at ordinary rate.
- Non-daily newspaper public holiday rates split by role - publishing employees at 250%, other roles at 200%.
- • Printing
- • Publishing
- • Packaging
- • Newspapers
- • Photographic processing
The consolidated award text is the authoritative source. Always confirm specific obligations against the award itself - Mployr's implementation status reflects what we've seeded; it does not replace legal advice.
Want to see this award running on your data?
We can demo a pay run on the graphic arts & printing award using sample employees in a sandbox tenant - including any of the special-instruction steps above so you can see exactly what your team's day-to-day looks like.
Book a demo