Casual Employment Agreements
A casual employee is not defined in employment legislation.
However, the term generally describes when an employee has no guaranteed hours of work, no regular pattern of work, and no ongoing expectation of employment.
The employer doesn't have to offer work to the employee, and the employee doesn't have to accept the work that is offered.
The employee works as and when it suits both them and the employer.
This can sometimes happen because it's hard for the employer to predict when the work needs to be done.
Each time the employee accepts an offer of work, it is treated as a new period of employment.
The most common example of such arrangements in education is day-to-day relief teachers.
Employment rights and responsibilities also apply to casual employees, but how annual holidays, sick, and bereavement leave are applied can vary.
Casual employees generally cannot be permanent or fixed-term because of the irregular nature of their work.
This is where a casual employment arrangement may be appropriate.
The law around the use of casual employment is strict.
The courts have often ruled in favour of employees who claim to be permanent employees despite being employed using a casual agreement.
It is, therefore, important to get it right.
What are the fundamentals of casual employment?
A casual employment arrangement is only suitable for an employee who occasionally works on an "as and when required" basis. For example, when there is no regular or predictable pattern of work days or hours.
An employee employed under a casual employment agreement has no obligation to accept any offer of work that is made to them.
At the same time, the employer has no obligation to offer ongoing work.
If you are unsure about whether a casual arrangement is suitable, ask yourself these two questions:
Will the employee be:
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Working in a predictable pattern?
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Unable to decline work if it is offered/expected to come into work when called?
If the answer to either (or both) of these questions is yes, casual employment is not suitable.
A fixed-term or permanent employment arrangement may be more appropriate.
Casual employment of relief teachers
If you request a relief teacher in advance of the time they are required and place them into the classroom schedule or timetable, and on the day/dates they were expected to work, they call in sick, they are entitled to be paid sick leave (if they have sick leave entitlements available to them).
Safety checking
Like all employees, casual employees must be safety checked and police vetted before being offered employment.
You can read more about this in our safety checking and police vetting article.
How should you document casual employment?
If casual employment is suitable, you will need to document it.
This includes a letter of offer, which makes it clear that it is casual employment and that there is no future obligation to offer or accept employment. You need to also avoid any verbal discussions that could lead a casual employee to believe they may be offered future employment.
The letters in the next section do this – use them to make your casual appointment.
Some additional steps are involved when offering employment to someone who is not a union member or will be doing work not covered by a CA. Our related article on offering employment in a unionised environmentopen_in_new explains this.
Templates, resources, and references
Click on the link(s) below to access the templates, resources, and references related to this topic.
These may download or open in a separate browser depending on your device.
Links from us
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LoO – Community Education Coordinator Assistant and Non-teaching Coordinatoropen_in_new
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LoO – Community Education Professional Supervisor and Tutor casualopen_in_new