Pay Rates by Employer in Australia
Many of Australia’s largest employers do not pay under a modern award. They pay under an enterprise agreement of their own, approved by the Fair Work Commission. Each page here reads one employer’s agreement from the Commission’s own copy and works out the rates in force now.
Employers covered so far.
An employer appears here once its agreement has been extracted and every figure checked, not before. Each card names the agreement and its Fair Work Commission ID so it can be found in the Commission’s search.
Woolworths Pay Rates
Woolworths Australian Food Group Agreement 2024 (AE525523), in operation since 21 October 2024, nominal expiry 17 April 2028. Entry rate $28.26 an hour, derived from its increase rule.
Coles Pay Rates
Coles Retail Enterprise Agreement 2024 (AE524516), in operation since 7 October 2024, nominal expiry 3 May 2028. Entry rate $28.42 an hour, derived from its increase rule.
Kmart Pay Rates
Kmart National Agreement 2024 (AE526796), in operation since 10 March 2025, nominal expiry 17 November 2028. Entry rate $27.96 an hour, derived from its increase rule.
How an enterprise agreement sets pay.
An enterprise agreement is made between an employer and its employees, voted on, and then approved by the Fair Work Commission. While it applies, the modern award that would otherwise cover the work does not. The agreement sets its own pay rates, penalty rates, rosters and allowances, and the National Employment Standards still apply underneath it.
Before approving an agreement the Commission must be satisfied that it passes the better off overall test: that each employee would be better off overall than under the award. It is a judgement about the whole package, so an agreement can trade a higher base rate for lower weekend penalties, or the other way round. Separately, section 206 of the Fair Work Act 2009 does not allow an agreement’s base rate of pay to be lower than the award’s. When the award rises past an agreement rate, the award rate is owed.
Every agreement has a nominal expiry date, no more than four years after approval. It is not an end date. The agreement keeps applying until a new one replaces it or the Commission terminates it, which is why each page here states whether that date has passed.
An agreement can also be written as a margin over the award instead of a table of its own: Kmart Pay Rates shows one that pays the award rate plus a fixed number of cents. Commonwealth agencies bargain the same way, one agreement per agency, and the APS-wide salary floors sit beside Defence Force salaries on Public Sector Pay Scales.
The agreements on these pages tie their increases to the retail award, so each page sets the agreement against the award's figures on Retail Award Pay Rates, and its junior rates against Junior Pay Rates.
Where the figures come from.
Only from the agreement as the Fair Work Commission publishes it, which carries the approval decision on its first pages, and from the Commission’s award determinations where the agreement ties its rates to the award. Never from a union summary, a recruiter, a salary survey, a news report or another pay site.
The agreements here print their rates once, for the day they start, and then raise them by a rule: the Annual Wage Review percentage, or the award rate plus a fixed margin. Where the agreement does not print the rate in force now, the page works it out from that rule and marks it as derived, with the method stated beside the table. Each extraction checks every printed figure it uses against a second figure where the documents print one, and against a second reading of the document where they do not, and stops on a single cent of disagreement.