Community service leave is unpaid except for jury service.
Community service leave for jury service is paid for employees other than casuals. An employee (other than a casual) is entitled to ‘make-up pay’ for the first 10 days that the employee is absent for a period of jury service.
Make-up pay is the difference between:
- any jury service pay the employee receives (excluding any expense-related allowances) and
- the employee’s base rate of pay for each hour (or part hour) they would have worked, excluding separate entitlements, such as incentive-based payments and bonuses, loadings, monetary allowances, overtime or penalty rates.
Before paying make-up pay, an employer may ask the employee to provide reasonable evidence:
- that they tried to claim jury service pay
- of the total amount of jury service pay that has been paid (even if there was no jury service payment),
- of the total amount of jury service pay that is payable, for the period (even if there was no jury service payment).
If the relevant State or Territory laws provide more beneficial entitlements than the NES in relation to eligible community service activities, those laws continue to apply. This may be particularly relevant for paid jury service.