This guide reflects the Pharmacy Industry Award as at 1 July 2026, including the Fair Work Commission's Annual Wage Review decision and the second phase of the pharmacist pay equity correction. The information provided is general in nature, and if you want specific advice for your circumstances, you should consult an employment advisory service.

The Pharmacy Award is the main instrument used to pay employees in the community pharmacy sector. It sets pay and conditions for pharmacists, pharmacy students, interns and pharmacy assistants. This year brings more change than usual, with two separate wage increases landing within days of each other for some classifications, and wage underpayment now carrying criminal as well as civil consequences under federal law. So it's worth taking the time to get your rates and classifications correct.

Working through award rates, classifications, penalties and entitlements by hand is a significant amount of ongoing calculation, and it only gets more involved as an award changes. This is the kind of maths that Tanda's award interpretation software is built to take on, applying rates, penalties and allowances automatically as timesheets come in, so businesses aren't doing that calculation manually every pay run.

Awards are the industrial instrument that governs the pay and conditions for Australia’s biggest industries. They exist to give workers a fair wage while recognising the need for businesses to make a profit. Awards exist across different industries so that these factors can be weighed up, including the Pharmacy Industry Award. The Fair Work Commission reviews and updates these rates every year, and it also periodically reviews whether certain roles are being paid in line with the skills and responsibility they actually require, which is exactly what's happening in pharmacy right now.

The Pharmacy Industry Award MA000012 covers community pharmacies and their employees. Importantly, this excludes pharmacists employed in hospitals or other institutional settings.

There are more than 180 modern awards in Australia, each with well over a hundred individual rules covering things like overtime, breaks, rostered days off and public holidays. Pharmacy has its own added layer this year, with two separate wage increases landing close together for pharmacists and interns while assistant and student rates only move once.

Naturally, this makes following the law tricky, particularly in complicated industries like Pharmacy. Many pharmacy employers have made genuine payroll errors as a result of this complexity, rather than through any intent to underpay. Some businesses still look up entitlements manually using Fair Work's calculators, which becomes more time consuming as a team grows. Tanda's automated award interpretation exists to take on that calculation work, applying the current rate for each classification and updating it when Fair Work changes the rules, including annual wage reviews and decision-based increases.

This is probably the single biggest thing to understand about pharmacy pay this year. In 2025, the Fair Work Commission ran a work value case and found that pharmacists had been undervalued by around 14.1 percent relative to the skills, responsibility and training the role actually requires. Rather than apply the full correction at once, the Commission is phasing it in over three years:

• Phase 1 took effect from the first full pay period on or after 30 June 2025.
• Phase 2 takes effect from the first full pay period on or after 30 June 2026.
• Phase 3 is due to take effect from 30 June 2027.

This correction applies specifically to pharmacists and pharmacy interns, not to pharmacy assistants or students. To add to the complexity, the general Annual Wage Review increase of 4.75 percent also applies from 1 July 2026, landing just days after the pay equity increase. That means pharmacist and intern rates move twice in quick succession this year.

This kind of work value review isn't unique to pharmacy. The Commission has been running similar reviews across several caring and community sector awards, including early childhood education and aged care.

Read the Commission's own explanation at Changes to the Pharmacy Award.

More pharmacy businesses are turning to automated award interpretation software as part of their approach to this. Tanda's software incorporates the Pharmacy Industry Award rates and updates them when Fair Work changes the rules, taking on the calculation of the correct rate, penalty and allowance for a given shift so that part of the process doesn't rest on a manual lookup.

Two changes are worth being aware of this year:

• Wage theft is now a crime. Since 1 January 2025, intentionally underpaying an employee can lead to criminal prosecution, not just a civil penalty, under changes to the Fair Work Act 2009. Genuine mistakes are still treated differently to deliberate underpayment.
• Payday Super starts 1 July 2026. Employers now need to pay super at the same time they pay wages, rather than quarterly.

Basic workforce management systems typically record time and attendance, then apply the relevant pay rate and simple or custom rules you have to set up, before sending it through to payroll. This is the calculation Tanda's platform is designed to handle automatically on an ongoing basis, as awards and rates change.

One of the biggest reasons employers underpay staff is because employees have been placed in the wrong classification. Rates and entitlements can vary significantly between levels, so it's worth checking duties and qualifications carefully against the award description, not just a job title. Fair Work has a complete guide on classifying staff, but for a basic outline, see below:

Full-time employees

• Works an average of 38 hours each week.
• Can be a permanent employee or on a fixed-term contract.

Part-time employees

• On average work less than 38 hours per week.
• Usually work regular hours each week (e.g. 9am - 2pm every Wednesday)
• Can be a permanent employee or on a fixed-term contract.

Casual Employees

• Are employed with the understanding that there is no firm advance commitment to ongoing work or an agreed pattern of work.

Federal law allows eligible casuals to move to permanent employment, so they don't work full-time hours for long periods without access to annual leave or sick leave. The Pharmacy Award includes casual conversion, which is a rule worth factoring into how you plan rosters over time.

The casual conversion process was updated as part of the Closing Loopholes No.2 Act 2024. Now, it operates as an employee choice pathway where eligible staff can request conversion to permanent employment - this means the onus is no longer on the employer to track and provide offer of conversion. The old employer led pathway for small businesses ended on 26 August 2025, so every pharmacy business, regardless of size, is now on the same employee choice system. Clause 11.6 of the Pharmacy Award specifies the circumstances for casual workers to apply for part-time classification, including:

• They have been working for the business for six (6) months (twelve (12) months for small businesses); and
• They believe they no longer meet the requirements of the casual employee definition.

Modern awards include entitlements, penalties and allowances for certain kinds of work. Penalty rates pay workers more for inconvenient hours, like a public holiday shift. Overtime pays more when someone works beyond their rostered hours. Tracking which hours attract which rate, for every employee, across every shift, is a substantial amount of ongoing calculation, particularly as rates change through the year. This is the kind of calculation Tanda applies automatically as timesheets are recorded.

One broader change worth knowing about is the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Act 2025, passed in August 2025. It stops the Fair Work Commission from cutting penalty or overtime rates in a modern award, and from adding terms that fold those rates into a flat hourly rate if it would leave an employee worse off. Given how often weekend and public holiday penalty rates come up in public debate, this gives award-covered pharmacy staff more certainty about these entitlements over time.

Pharmacy Industry Award workers are also entitled to typical allowances like laundry, clothing and meals. Interpreting these can get complicated and depends on your specific business, so it's worth checking the award directly if you're unsure.

Workers under the Pharmacy Industry Award get the same leave entitlements as most Australian employees, set out in the National Employment Standards. How much leave someone gets depends on their classification. Casuals generally don't receive paid leave, while part-time and full-time employees do.

Full-time employees

• Entitled to paid leave including annual leave and sick & carer’s leave.

Part-time employees

• Entitled to paid leave including annual leave and sick & carer’s leave.

Casual employees

• Not entitled to paid leave including annual leave and sick & carer’s leave.

One change outside the award worth knowing about: the flexible portion of unpaid parental leave under the National Employment Standards is rising from 120 to 130 days for a child born or placed for adoption on or after 1 July 2026. This applies to all employees regardless of award. It lines up with a matching increase to the government's Parental Leave Pay scheme, run by Services Australia rather than employers, which is also moving to 130 paid days for the same families. Worth flagging to staff that these are two separate things, one an NES leave entitlement, the other a government payment. More detail on the payment side is on Services Australia's Parental Leave Pay page.