Christmas Eve, rostered shifts, and pay: what happens if the employer tells you not to attend?
- Brian AJ Newman LLB
- Dec 23, 2025
- 3 min read
Every Christmas, questions arise about pay when workers are rostered on a public holiday but are later told not to attend. A common scenario in retail pharmacy is a part-time worker rostered, for example, from 4.00 pm to 8.00 pm on Christmas Eve, only to be told by the employer: “Don’t come in, I don’t pay penalties after 6.00 pm.”
This situation raises important issues about rostered hours, public holidays, and employer obligations in Queensland.
Christmas Day is a public holiday in Queensland
Christmas Day is a gazetted public holiday in Queensland. For retail pharmacy assistants, work performed on that day ordinarily attracts public holiday penalties under the applicable industrial instrument.
The critical point is that the public holiday status applies to the entire day, not just part of a shift or certain hours that an employer finds convenient.
Rostered hours matter
Where a part-time employee has been rostered to work a specific shift, those hours form part of their ordinary employment arrangements.
If the employer later directs the worker not to attend that rostered shift, the absence is not the worker’s choice. In practical terms, the worker has made themselves available for work as required.
In employment law, this distinction is important. A worker who is ready and willing to work but is stood down or told not to attend by the employer is in a very different position to a worker who voluntarily declines a shift.
Employers cannot selectively avoid penalties
An employer cannot lawfully avoid public holiday obligations simply by deciding they do not wish to pay penalty rates for part of a shift.
If a business chooses not to operate, or chooses to cancel a rostered shift because it does not want to incur public holiday costs, that is a business decision. The financial consequence of that decision does not automatically shift to the worker.
In plain terms, an employer cannot roster a worker, then cancel the shift solely to avoid paying public holiday penalties, without consequences.
Should the worker still be paid?
Where a part-time retail pharmacy assistant in Queensland is rostered to work on Christmas Day and is later told not to attend by the employer, the general industrial principle is that the worker should not be financially disadvantaged for complying with that direction.
Payment outcomes depend on the specific award, agreement, and employment arrangements, but the consistent principle is this: workers should not lose their ordinary earnings simply because an employer decides not to honour a roster due to penalty rates.
Why this issue keeps coming up
This issue arises every year because public holidays expose the tension between labour costs and business operations. The law, however, is designed to protect workers from bearing the cost of employer decisions about whether or not to trade on a public holiday.
Retail pharmacy assistants, like all retail workers, are entitled to clarity, certainty, and fairness around rostered hours, particularly on significant public holidays such as Christmas Day.
Key takeaway for workers
If you are rostered to work on Christmas Day or any other public holiday and your employer later tells you not to attend because they do not want to pay penalties, that is not the same as you choosing not to work.
Rostered hours matter. Public holidays matter. And employer decisions about costs do not erase worker entitlements.
This is exactly the kind of issue the MYUNION community exists to unpack, explain, and discuss openly.
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