Animal Care and Veterinary Services Award
Three-sector award — vet surgeons, support staff (vet nurses, kennel hands, animal attendants), and inspectors (RSPCA, council, etc.) — with completely different rate structures, penalty regimes and overtime rules per stream. Vet surgeons are the trickiest case: their overtime is not a multiplier regime at all.
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.
What's built
- Three sectors with separate classifications: vet_surgeon, support, inspector.
- Sector-scoped penalty rates — vet surgeon public holiday is 2x (cl. 27.3) while non-vet PH is 2.5x (cl. 21.1, 27.2).
- On-call regimes for both vet surgeons and non-vet streams.
- Junior rates.
- Overtime / penalty rules wired to the resolver for support and inspector streams (standard time-and-half / double-time pathway).
Known limitations
- Vet surgeon overtime is NOT a multiplier regime (cl. 20.2) — the resolver checks AwardConfiguration keys (vet_surgeon_overtime_method, vet_surgeon_overtime_rate_basis) and applies comp time at ordinary rate or an allowance instead. If your vet surgeons rely on the standard time-and-half / double-time path, the result will be incorrect — confirm the configuration matches your enterprise agreement / contract.
- Vet surgeon and inspector streams are hourly-only in the pay guide. Weekly rates are stored as hourly × 38 to satisfy the schema, but the hourly rate is authoritative.
- No apprentice rates — animal care / veterinary science isn't an apprenticeship trade.
Setup & special instructions
- Assign each employee to one of the three sectors before pay run: vet_surgeon, support, or inspector. Each has its own rate scale, allowances and penalty rules.
- Vet surgeons: confirm your overtime arrangement (comp time at ordinary rate / allowance / contractual pathway) and ensure the AwardConfiguration vet_surgeon_overtime_method is set accordingly. Do NOT assume time-and-half / double-time will apply automatically.
- Vet surgeon public holiday rate is 2x (cl. 27.3) — half a multiplier lower than the non-vet 2.5x.
- Casual minimum engagement has a special 2.5-hour case (cl. 11.5) when very specific conditions are met — separate from the standard 2-hour minimum. Set the min_engagement_casual_special configuration if your enterprise meets the trigger conditions.
- • Veterinary clinics
- • Animal welfare
- • Pet care
- • RSPCA and council inspectors
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 animal care & veterinary 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