Employment Amendment Act 2025

What this bill does

This bill clarifies how employers should calculate "a week's wages" for employees when determining time-off entitlements. It specifies that tips and other gratuities should not be included in these wage calculations, and makes this change apply retroactively to March 1, 2024.

If passed (voted YES)

• Tips and gratuities will be officially excluded from wage calculations used to determine employee time-off benefits
• Employees who received gratuity payments since March 2024 cannot be forced to pay them back to employers
• Employers who already calculated wages this way since March 2024 will be considered to have done so correctly

If rejected (voted NO)

• The confusion about whether to include tips and gratuities in wage calculations would continue
• Employees might have to return gratuity payments they received since March 2024
• Employers would remain uncertain about the correct way to calculate wages for time-off purposes

Who it affects

This primarily affects employees who receive tips or gratuities (such as restaurant servers, hotel workers, and other service industry staff) and their employers who need to calculate time-off entitlements.