Coles and Woolworths Managers: Federal Court Says Hours Outside the Roster Aren't Automatically Overtime

Four proceedings have been running together in the Federal Court: the Fair Work Ombudsman's regulatory actions against Woolworths Group and Coles Supermarkets, and two class actions on behalf of store-based salaried managers, the people known internally as counter heads. Liability was decided on 5 September 2025 ([2025] FCA 1092). Since then the parties have been unable to agree on the declarations that give effect to it, and by Justice Perram's count filed 554 pages of submissions on the remaining issues. His reasons resolving them were delivered on 27 August 2026 as [2026] FCA 1229 (report of the decision). The matters return for case management on 1 October 2026. Compensation has not yet been quantified; that was carved out of the initial trial by an order made in July 2022.

The Ombudsman argued that where an employee worked hours additional to their rostered hours, those hours attracted overtime under the General Retail Industry Award 2010, and that this followed logically from the liability findings. Justice Perram said it was "the opposite of what I concluded". The award's overtime clause, clause 29.2(a), "operates by reference to a roster condition, not a roster". Work done outside a published roster is not overtime just because it is outside the roster.

The reason lies in clause 28.1, which lets an employer choose one of four rostering cycles: 38 hours over a week, 76 over a fortnight, 114 over three weeks or 152 over four weeks. "Once the choice is made it is the corresponding clause which applies." An employer on the 152-hour four-week cycle, which is how Woolworths rosters, does not also carry the 38-hour weekly condition. It will often not be apparent until the four-week cycle ends whether hours have exceeded the roster condition at all. Whether Coles rosters weekly or four-weekly is a question of fact the Court will decide if the regulator disputes it.

The judgment also settled when the meal allowance in clause 20.1 is triggered. "Ordinary time of ending work" means the rostered finish time, unless the employee flexibly altered their hours, in which case the altered finish time governs. An employee who performs reasonably required overtime after that point, including by going beyond the 152-hour condition, gets the allowance; hours worked for personal convenience are not overtime and do not. Where a manager sets their own roster more than 24 hours ahead and that roster provides for overtime, that counts as notice. A regular pattern of overtime does not: "Whilst notice is not a completely clear concept, it is sufficiently definitive to require the occurrence of an event."

And on the short-break penalty in clause 31.2(a): "A single shift cannot be commenced twice which is to say that the word 'commence' in cl 31.2(a) means 'commence'." Justice Perram also rejected the Ombudsman's position that declarations without a dollar figure would have no concrete effect; declarations about what the sample employees' entitlements are will resolve a real dispute about how the award works.

• Salaried managers at Coles or Woolworths: the class actions continue and liability has been found; the fight now is over the precise entitlements and, later, the money. Whether your extra hours were overtime depends on the roster cycle your employer used and the roster condition, not simply on the roster you were given.
• Award-paid retail workers: the same clauses apply to you. Overtime under the Retail Award turns on the ordinary-hours limits and roster conditions, so the questions are your roster cycle, your maximum daily hours and the spread of hours. Our Retail Award pay rates page has the penalties and loadings, and the Woolworths and Coles pay guides cover their agreements.
• Anyone on a salary that is meant to absorb overtime: annualised or "all-inclusive" salaries under an award have to leave you better off than the award across the period, and records still have to be kept. The back-pay calculator and payslip checker are the places to test it.