A Pay Scale contains pre-modern award pay entitlements for a particular employee, such as:
- an employee's minimum hourly base rate of pay (or piece rate)
- an employee's minimum casual loading (where applicable).
Pay Scales do not include overtime or penalty rates. These entitlements are usually contained in a relevant award or agreement.
Pay Scales are notional instruments - they do not exist in a physical form that can be looked up.
However, summaries of Pay Scales (Pay Scale summaries) were developed by the Workplace Authority (a former federal statutory body) by reference to particular awards as at 26 March 2006. These summaries included any relevant adjustments to rates of pay made by the former Australian Fair Pay Commission between 2006 and 2008.
Pay Scale summaries include:
- minimum hourly rates of pay (or piece rate)
- minimum casual loadings (where applicable)
- pay rates for juniors, apprentices and trainees (where applicable)
- different rates of pay for different job classifications (e.g. level 1, level 2 or level 3), and
- information about who the Pay Scale applied to.