Can My Boss Reduce My Hours?

The single biggest factor in whether your boss can cut your hours is the type of employment you're in. Full-timers, part-timers and casuals have wildly different protections, and a lot of workers only find out which bucket they're really in when things go wrong.

Full-time employees. Your contract says 38 hours per week (or whatever the award specifies). That's a guaranteed minimum. An employer cannot unilaterally drop you to 30 hours and call it a win: they'd be in breach of contract and underpaying you.

Part-time employees. Part-timers have guaranteed hours under their contract and the National Employment Standards. The contract should specify your regular days and hours. Reducing those hours needs your agreement, same as a pay cut. If your contract says "minimum 24 hours per week" and the roster gives you 16, your employer is in breach.

Casual employees. Here's where it gets brutal. Casuals have no guaranteed hours at all. That's literally the definition of casual work. Your boss can give you 38 hours one week and zero the next, and it's not illegal. You pay a price for the 25% casual loading, and the price is this kind of unpredictability.

Not sure which category you're in? Check your contract, payslips (does it say "casual loading"?) and whether you accrue annual leave. If you accrue annual leave you're not a casual, no matter what the boss calls you.

Four scenarios where your hours can legitimately drop.

1. You agreed to it. Same rule as pay cuts. If you consent in writing to a reduction in hours, it's lawful. But the agreement has to be genuine. Signing under duress ("reduce your hours or I'll let you go") is not free consent.

2. You're casual. As above: casuals have no hour guarantees. Your boss can drop you to zero shifts without explanation. Cold, but legal.

3. A stand-down under s.524 of the Fair Work Act. This is a specific and narrow provision. We'll unpack it in the next section.

4. Genuine redundancy of hours or role restructure. If the business genuinely needs fewer hours of your type of work, your employer can offer a reduced-hours arrangement or make your role redundant. Redundancy triggers redundancy pay under the NES (up to 16 weeks at 9+ years service).

Notice what's not on this list. "Business is slow." "We need to cut costs." "My other manager said to." None of these are lawful reasons to unilaterally cut a full-timer's or part-timer's guaranteed hours. They might be reasons to negotiate with you, or to explore redundancy, but they don't let the boss just do it.

One important wrinkle: if you've been working extra hours above your contract (say, a part-timer contracted for 20 hours who's regularly doing 30), the employer can pull you back to the contracted 20 without your agreement. You weren't entitled to the extras in the first place.

This is where part-timers need to pay attention. Under the National Employment Standards and every modern award, a part-time employee must have a written agreement specifying the guaranteed number of hours they'll work and when those hours are usually performed.

Go and find your contract. Look for a clause that says something like "guaranteed minimum hours of 20 per week, usually Tuesday to Friday, 9am-2pm." That's your safety net. Your employer can roster you for more than those hours with your agreement, but they cannot drop you below.

Some awards have specific minimum engagement rules too. The General Retail Industry Award 2020 requires part-timers to be rostered for a minimum of 3 consecutive hours per shift. The Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 has similar 3-hour minimums. The Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Award has a 2-hour minimum (with some exceptions for disability home care).

If your part-time contract doesn't specify guaranteed hours at all, that's actually a compliance problem for your employer. The Fair Work Ombudsman has pinged employers for this. In that case, the hours you've been regularly working become your de facto guaranteed pattern and any significant reduction is a change your employer would need to negotiate.

Casual conversion adds another layer. Under the 2024 changes, regular casuals can request conversion to permanent employment after 6 months. Once you convert, your hours become guaranteed. If your boss has been refusing to convert you so that they can keep cutting your shifts, that's potentially adverse action.

This is the provision your boss might reach for when things get ugly. Section 524 of the Fair Work Act lets an employer stand down employees without pay if they cannot usefully employ them because of a stoppage of work for which the employer is not responsible.

Key words: "for which the employer is not responsible." Commercial downturn, loss of a major client, bad management, poor cash flow: none of these qualify. You can't just invoke s.524 because business is slow.

What does qualify? Historically, the Fair Work Commission has accepted:

• Natural disasters (floods, bushfires) that make the worksite inaccessible
• Government-mandated closures (we saw a lot of these during COVID-19)
• Industrial action by other employees (not yours)
• Breakdown of essential machinery that's genuinely outside the employer's control

Even when s.524 is properly invoked, important protections apply:

• You're not paid during the stand-down period, but you still accrue annual leave and personal leave
• Your employer cannot stand you down if there's alternative useful work available (including WFH where feasible)
• Your employment continues: you aren't terminated
• You can elect to take paid annual leave or long service leave during the period to keep getting paid
• You can dispute an unlawful stand-down at the Fair Work Commission

Stand-downs are rare and genuinely difficult for employers to get right. If your boss has "stood you down" because the shop is quiet or a client cancelled, they're almost certainly doing it unlawfully.

Three quick moves.

1. Check the paperwork. Your contract, your most recent roster, your payslips for the last three months. Work out what your guaranteed hours actually are (vs what you've been working lately) and what the gap is costing you. Use our pay calculator to translate cut hours into dollars.

2. Ask why in writing. Email your manager: "Hi, I noticed my rostered hours have dropped from 32 to 22 per week. Can you confirm the reason, and whether this is a permanent change or a temporary one?" Keep it neutral. You're gathering evidence.

3. Push back in writing if the answer is dodgy. "Thanks for confirming. My contract specifies a guaranteed minimum of 32 hours per week. I don't agree to a reduction. Please restore my rostered hours or confirm the lawful basis for the change." That puts them on notice. It also starts the clock on any underpayment claim.

If nothing changes within a week or two, lodge a free complaint with the Fair Work Ombudsman. They'll investigate. Average resolution time is around 6-8 weeks for straightforward cases.

And if the reduction was retaliation for something you did (raising a safety issue, requesting flexible work under s.65, taking personal leave, joining a union) you've got 21 days from the adverse action to file a general protections claim. That's a much faster and more powerful pathway. Don't let it lapse.

This one trips people up. If your hours were slashed and you're tempted to resign, think very carefully before you hand in your notice. You might be walking away from a redundancy payout.

Under Australian law there's a concept called constructive dismissal (sometimes called forced resignation). If your employer reduces your hours so drastically that your position is effectively gone, and you resign in response, the Fair Work Commission can treat your resignation as a dismissal at the employer's initiative. That opens the door to:

• Redundancy pay under the NES (scaling from 4 weeks at 1-2 years to 16 weeks at 9+ years service)
• An unfair dismissal claim (21-day deadline)
• A general protections claim if the hour cut was also retaliation (21-day deadline)

The test isn't about how you feel. It's whether a reasonable person would conclude your employer's conduct gave you no real choice but to resign. Cutting a 38-hour full-timer to 10 hours? That's almost certainly constructive dismissal. Reducing hours by 10% across the board because of a genuine downturn? Probably not.

Critical rule: do not resign first and then try to claim redundancy afterwards. It's very hard to win. Instead, document the hours cut, raise it formally in writing, give your employer a reasonable opportunity to restore your hours, and only resign if they refuse. Even then, get legal advice before you quit.

Use our unfair dismissal calculator to see whether your circumstances meet the thresholds, and the pay calculator to quantify the redundancy entitlement you'd be walking away from.