Horticulture Award
Covers the horticulture industry - sowing, planting, raising, cultivation, harvesting, picking, washing, packing, storing, grading, forwarding or treating of horticultural crops. 5 classifications (Levels 1-5, standard rate Level 2). Excludes wine, silviculture, sugar, cotton and plant nurseries. Pieceworkers are a distinctive feature with their own rate-setting and exclusions from ordinary-hours / meal / overtime clauses.
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 5 cl. 15.1 classifications at the July 2025 figures.
- Junior rates from under-16 (50%) through 19-year-old (90%), 20+ as adult.
- Pieceworker rules per cl. 15.2 - average-productivity ≥15% above hourly rate, daily floor at hourly × hours, casual piece rate includes 25% loading, public holiday 200% of piece rate.
- Higher-duties rule - >2 hours = whole shift at higher rate, ≤2 hours = pro-rata.
- Casual quirk: 5am-8.30pm 25% loading; 8.31pm-4.59am ADDITIONAL 15% on top of the 25% (cl. 13.2(d)).
- FT / PT averaging - 152 hours over a 4-week cycle; casuals 304 hours over an 8-week cycle.
Known limitations
No outstanding gaps at this revision - re-verify on the next Fair Work pay-guide release.
Setup & special instructions
- Pieceworkers are EXCLUDED from cl. 13 (ordinary hours), cl. 18.3(c) (meal allowance) and cl. 21 (overtime) - set the pieceworker flag on the employee so the resolver applies the right rule set.
- Casual outside-span hours (8.31pm-4.59am) attract an ADDITIONAL 15% loading stacked on top of the 25% casual loading.
- 'Pieceworker competent at the piecework task' (cl. 15.2(a)(iv)) requires ≥76 hours' experience - track competency separately from base classification.
- • Horticulture
- • Crop farming
- • Harvesting
- • Plant cultivation
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 horticulture 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