Aurizon Pay Rates 2026: EA Pay Grades & Award Floor

Aurizon is the country's largest rail freight operator, hauling coal, iron ore, grain and containers across Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia and owning the Central Queensland Coal Network. Train crew, network maintainers, rollingstock tradespeople, terminal operators and control-centre staff make up the workforce.

Aurizon bargains by business unit and state, and our corpus holds a long list of Aurizon agreements (below). The federal safety net is the Rail Industry Award 2020, whose operations ladder is tabled below — every Aurizon agreement rate has to beat it, and in practice the agreements sit well above.

The federal awards relevant to Aurizon roles:

• Rail Industry Award 2020 (MA000015)

Workforce snapshot. In its 2024-25 report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Aurizon Holdings Limited declared 6,332 employees across 8 reporting entities — 3.3% casual and 23.4% women, with 851 in management roles. Source: WGEA 2025 Public Data File, data.gov.au (CC-BY 3.0 AU).

The Rail Industry Award 2020 (MA000015) is the federal safety net under every rail operator's agreement. Its operations-stream base rates (weekly ÷ 38) are:

Rail agreements pay well above this ladder, so the award matters as the floor when an agreement expires and as the benchmark in bargaining, not as your payslip. The award also publishes shift, weekend and annualised variants of each level that are not shown here.

Source: Fair Work Commission modern awards pay database, current-operative rates (1 July 2026 annual wage review). Casual figures add the 25% casual loading.

Enterprise agreements set rates above the award, with their own classification structures and allowances. Current Aurizon agreements in our corpus (22 in total):

• Aurizon Port Services Stevedoring Enterprise Agreement 2025 — approved November 2025, nominal expiry 24 November 2029.
• Aurizon NSW Coal Operations Enterprise Agreement 2026 — approved August 2026, nominal expiry 10 November 2029.
• Aurizon Coal Enterprise Agreement 2026 — approved August 2026, nominal expiry 19 October 2029.
• Aurizon Bulk Central (SA/NT) Rollingstock Maintenance Enterprise Agreement 2026 — approved April 2026, nominal expiry 30 June 2029.
• Aurizon Bulk Central Rail Operations Enterprise Agreement 2026 — approved April 2026, nominal expiry 7 May 2029.
• Aurizon Bulk (Western Australia) Terminal Operations Enterprise Agreement 2024 — approved March 2025, nominal expiry 1 December 2028.
• Aurizon Bulk Central Terminal Operations Enterprise Agreement 2024 — approved October 2024, nominal expiry 21 October 2028.
• Aurizon Bulk Central Terminal Operations Enterprise Agreement 2024 — approved October 2024, nominal expiry 21 October 2028.

Plus 14 more — search "Aurizon" in our agreements database.

We don't reproduce agreement dollar figures here — the agreement covering your site, state and stream is the document to read. Find your agreement, then your classification, then your pay point, and compare it with your payslip. The award tables on this page are the floor every one of these agreements must beat.

General award-compliance issues that come up across the rail sector. This is a checklist for your own payslip, not a finding about Aurizon:

• Agreement pay grades not applied after a transfer of business or franchise change.
• Rostering and shift-change penalties under the agreement missed on short-notice changes.
• Unpaid sign-on, handover and travel at the start and end of shifts.
• Allowances (meal, travel, relieving) dropped when payroll systems change.

Match your payslip to your classification in the agreement (or the award tables above), and price any gap with our back-pay calculator. Raise it in writing with payroll or your manager first — most underpayments are fixed at that step. Unresolved, the Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94) recovers underpayments at no cost, up to six years back, and your union can run the claim for you. Not sure which instrument covers you? Ask our AI advisor with your role and location.