There may come a time when an employee is called up to attend for jury selection and / or jury duty (herein referred to as ‘jury service’).  In such circumstances, it is important for an employer to be aware of what an affected employee would be entitled to.

Jury service comes under Community Service Leave in the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), and is therefore a recognised form of leave.

If an employee (other than a casual employee) is required to attend for jury service, they may take that period as Community Service Leave.

As individuals normally receive a certain amount from our legal system for jury service, under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), you as an employer are required to pay the employee the difference between the employee’s normal base rate of pay (which excludes allowances, overtime/penalty rates, loadings etc), and what they are paid by the court system for jury service.

However, the following rules also apply:

(a)  if you request it, the employee must provide you with reasonable evidence that they took all necessary steps to obtain any jury service pay owed to the employee by the court system, and if they fail to do this, you do not have to pay the employee; and

(b)  if you are required to ‘make up’ the employee’s pay as described above, you only have to do so for the first 10 days of absence.