If you work part-time or full-time, you're entitled to paid sick leave in Australia. You get 10 days of paid sick leave per year if you work full-time, and if you don't use your days, they can carry over into the following year. You could be eligible for other benefits as well, like carer's leave and compassionate and bereavement leave. Read on to find out about your entitlements.
If you are unable to work due to illness or injury, your sick leave entitlements are the amount of time you are legally allowed to take off without repercussions. There are a few different types of sick leave entitlements in Australia; some are paid, others are not. Here's an overview of what you are entitled to:
Sick and carer's leave fall under the same leave entitlement. Full-time employees are entitled to 10 days of leave each year. The balance of leave you acquire each year also carries over into the next year. Part-time employees get pro rata of 10 days each year based on how many hours they work.
Once you've run out of paid sick leave, if you're still unable to work due to illness or injury you can take unpaid sick leave for up to 3 months. You can't be fired for taking unpaid sick leave provided you've been off work for less than 3 months and you can supply evidence of your illness or injury.
If you don't have any paid sick and carer's leave left, you get 2 days of unpaid carer's leave each time you need to provide care for a family or household member.
All employees are entitled to 2 days of compassionate and bereavement leave each time a member of their immediate family or household dies or suffers a life-threatening illness or injury.
This is a common question for Australian employees. If you were to suffer a serious illness or injury, would you have enough sick leave to cover your time off work until you recover?
While you might have enough paid sick leave to let you take a few days off when you're struck down by a stomach bug, what would happen if you were seriously injured in a car accident or suffered a heart attack and couldn't work for 6 months or more? In cases like these, you may find that you are forced to take unpaid sick leave. That's where income protection insurance can come in.
By having income protection you could feel comfortable knowing that if you were unable to work because of a long-term sickness or injury, you would still have an income to help you with your living expenses. You can use the table below to look at your income protection options and see how they can help in addition to your sick leave entitlements.
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The easiest way to calculate sick leave in Australia is to use the government's Leave Calculator.
In Australia, sick and carer's leave comes under the same entitlement. If you work full-time, you get 10 days off and pro rata for part-time employees. This works out as 1/26 of your working hours in a year. For example, if you work 38 hours a week, you'll get 76 hours of paid sick leave per year. If you work 19 hours a week, you'll get 38 hours of paid sick leave per year.
Here's an example of what this looks like:
Suzanne is a full-time employee who works 38 hours, 5 days a week. Rebecca is a part-time employee who works an average of 19 hours per week, working a 5-day fortnight. Suzanne gets 76 hours of paid sick and carer's leave per year. Rebecca gets half of Suzanne's paid sick and carer's leave (38 hours) per year as she works half the hours Suzanne works.
Keep in mind that this paid leave isn't automatic; rather, it starts accumulating from your first day of work and is based on your ordinary hours of work. The balance at the end of each year carries over, so you could be entitled to more days off depending on whether you've taken time off in the past.
Sick leave entitlements are set by the National Employment Standards (NES) so are the same across states. All full-time employees – except for casuals – are entitled to a minimum of 10 days paid leave per year.
Full-time and part-time workers can take paid sick leave if they're unable to work because they have coronavirus. You can take unpaid sick leave if you don't have any paid sick days left. Employers can't make you use your accumulated sick leave and you can't be dismissed if you're required to quarantine or self-isolate.
You're also allowed to take paid or unpaid carer's leave if you need to look after a family or household member who's sick with coronavirus. Casual employees get 2 days of unpaid carer's leave per occasion.
There are a few types of sick leave in Australia that you may be entitled to:
To qualify for paid or unpaid carer's leave, you'll need to be taking time off work to care for or support an immediate family member or a member of your household. A member of your household is anyone who lives with you, while an immediate family member is a:
Please note that step-relations and adoptive relations are also included in the above definition.
Compared to other countries, sick leave is quite good in Australia. For example, in the UK, you only get £94.25 per week for statutory sick pay (SSP) if you're too ill to work. While it's paid by your employer for up to 28 weeks, it's well below the average income and you need to have been off work sick for 4 or more days in a row to be eligible. Similarly, there's no national requirement in the US to offer paid sick leave, although several states have their own laws. It's a federal law in Australia, which means the eligibility and entitlements are the same throughout the country.
If you need long-term sick leave in Australia, you have a few options. These include:
In fact, a 2017 Finder survey found that in the past 5 years, almost half a million Australians were forced to take unpaid leave in order to recover from a sporting injury, while 178,000 had to leave the workforce completely due to their injuries.
While the sick leave you've accumulated might seem like a lot, you might be surprised just how quickly you can use it all up. When that happens, you'll need to find some other way to provide financial support for your family.
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