Sonic Healthcare Pay Rates 2026: Collector, Lab & Support Staff Pay

Sonic Healthcare is the country's largest pathology provider, operating Douglass Hanly Moir, Sullivan Nicolaides, Melbourne Pathology, Clinipath and other labs, plus IPN medical centres and Sonic imaging. Its workforce is collectors, laboratory scientists and technicians, couriers, and the reception and administration staff behind a nationwide network of collection centres.

Pathology collectors, lab assistants, scientists and clerical staff sit on the Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020, with couriers under the road transport award. Sonic's labs have registered enterprise agreements over the years (below where our corpus holds them); the award ladder is the floor beneath all of them.

The federal awards relevant to Sonic Healthcare (Douglass Hanly Moir, Sullivan Nicolaides, IPN) roles:

• Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020 (MA000027)

Workforce snapshot. In its 2024-25 report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Sonic Healthcare Limited declared 19,580 employees across 25 reporting entities — 13.9% casual and 77.1% women, with 764 in management roles. Source: WGEA 2025 Public Data File, data.gov.au (CC-BY 3.0 AU).

The Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020 (MA000027) adult minimums for the roles that sit on it are:

Nurses and midwives are on the Nurses Award 2020 instead — current classification and pay-point figures are on our Nurses Award pay rates page. Weekend, shift and public holiday penalties apply on top of the figures above.

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 Sonic Healthcare (Douglass Hanly Moir, Sullivan Nicolaides, IPN) agreements in our corpus (2 in total):

• Melbourne Pathology and Health Services Union Scientists and Technicians Enterprise Agreement 2024 — approved August 2024, nominal expiry 1 July 2028.
• The Capital Pathology Enterprise Agreement 2023 — approved October 2023, nominal expiry 15 August 2026.

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 pathology sector. This is a checklist for your own payslip, not a finding about Sonic Healthcare (Douglass Hanly Moir, Sullivan Nicolaides, IPN):

• Frozen pay points — increments that should step annually but don't, especially after payroll migrations.
• Stream misclassification — admin, ward-support and collector staff left at Level 1–2 while doing Level 3 work.
• Unpaid handover — clinical and shift handover before and after rostered hours is work time.
• Weekend and night loadings dropped when rosters change or systems are replaced.

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.