Hospitality workers do get long service leave, but not from the award: it comes from state law, and New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria all accrue it at 0.8667 weeks a year, vesting at 10 years in the first two and 7 in Victoria.
Skai Solutions builds phone agents for venues across Australia and New Zealand, which means we look at a lot of hospitality payrolls, and this is the entitlement most often missing from them. Below is what each state regulator publishes, what the numbers come to, and the two figures we could not source.
No, and that is the first thing to fix, because "long service leave hospitality award" is one of the most common ways operators search for this. Long service leave is not a National Employment Standard and it is not written into the Hospitality Industry (General) Award or the Restaurant Industry Award. It comes from state and territory legislation, which is why the answer changes depending on where the venue is and why no single national figure exists.
New South Wales spells the relationship out. The Long Service Leave Act 1955 covers private sector, public sector and local government workers in New South Wales who are not entitled to long service leave from an award, enterprise agreement, industrial instrument or workplace law. For nearly every cafe, restaurant, pub and club, no such award entitlement exists, so the state Act is the instrument that applies. Checking the award for it and finding nothing is not evidence that nothing is owed.
Here are the three biggest states, from the regulators, with the underlying instrument named.
| State | Instrument | Vests after | Leave at vesting | Then |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | Long Service Leave Act 1955 | 10 years continuous service | 2 months, and the Act defines a month as 4 1/3 weeks, so 8.6667 weeks | 1 further month, 4.3333 weeks, per additional 5 years |
| Queensland | Industrial Relations Act 2016 | 10 years continuous service | 8.6667 weeks | A further 4.3333 weeks after another 5 years, 13 weeks total at 15 years, then accessible as it accrues |
| Victoria | Long Service Leave Act 2018 | 7 years continuous service | 1 week per 60 weeks of service, about 0.866 of a week a year | Continues to accrue at the same rate |
All three cover full time, part time and casual service. Victoria adds seasonal and fixed term to the list explicitly.
Run the three columns out per year of service. This arithmetic is Skai Solutions' own, from the published figures above.
Three separate acts of parliament, drafted decades apart, land on the same number to four decimal places. The consequence matters more than the coincidence: the provision you should be carrying per hour worked is the same in all three states, and the only thing that differs is the date the employee can demand it. At the ten year mark a Victorian employee has 8.6667 weeks too. Victoria's difference is three years of earlier access, not a bigger entitlement.
That reframes the question. If you have been treating long service leave as a Victorian problem because seven sounds worse than ten, the accrual has been building at exactly the same rate in your Sydney and Brisbane venues the whole time.
Yes, and this is where hospitality differs from almost every other industry, because hospitality runs on long-serving casuals. New South Wales names casual workers in the list of workers entitled under the Act, alongside full time, part time, pieceworkers, commission workers and outworkers. Queensland says the qualifying period for casual or regular part time employees is the same as for full time employees, ten years. Victoria includes casual service in continuous service.
Casual loading does not buy this out. The 25 per cent loading in the award compensates for the National Employment Standard entitlements a casual does not get, and long service leave is not one of those: it sits outside the award entirely, in state law. Our casual loading in hospitality page covers what the loading does and does not cover.
Queensland publishes the formula, which is the useful part because it converts a hours-based roster into weeks of leave:
total ordinary hours worked, divided by 52, multiplied by 8.6667, divided by 10 = hours of long service leave.
A worked example, and it is Skai Solutions' arithmetic on the Queensland formula, not a figure from the regulator. Take a casual food and beverage attendant at Level 2 who has averaged 25 ordinary hours a week for ten years in a Queensland venue.
Pricing it needs a rate, and the Queensland guidance says long service leave is paid at the ordinary rate being paid at the time the leave is taken, excluding overtime, and at the higher rate if the employee is paid above the award. Using the Fair Work pay guide published 24 June 2026, Level 2 on the Restaurant Industry Award is A$27.08 an hour permanent and A$33.85 casual.
A gap we are not going to paper over. Which of those two rates applies to a long serving casual is not settled on the page we read. Queensland states the ordinary rate without addressing casual loading for this purpose. So treat A$5,867 as the floor, A$7,334 as the ceiling, and confirm the rate with the Office of Industrial Relations before you book a number. A range you can defend beats a single figure you cannot.
For the award rates behind this, see hospitality award rates in Australia.
This is the question the seven-versus-ten framing gets wrong, and both regulators answer it differently.
In Victoria, seven years is a vesting date. Reach it and the entitlement exists.
In Queensland, seven years opens a conditional pro rata payment on termination, and the conditions are about why the employment ended. Between 7 and under 10 years an employee gets pro rata long service leave only if the termination was because of their death, because they resigned due to illness or a domestic or other pressing necessity, because the employer dismissed them for illness, because the employer dismissed them for a reason other than conduct, capacity or performance, or because they were unfairly dismissed. A plain resignation to take a better job is not on that list. At ten years the entitlement becomes automatic on termination and the reason stops mattering. Queensland's own example: twelve years of service is 10.4 weeks, being 8.6667 plus 1.73333.
So two employees with identical eight year tenures and identical accruals, one in Melbourne and one in Brisbane, both handing in notice for a better offer: the Victorian one is paid and the Queensland one is not. Same rate, same years, opposite outcome, decided by the reason for leaving.
Queensland also notes that the law on service outside the state, including overseas service, is now settled and each case turns on Infosys Technologies Limited v Fox [2025] QCA 45. Relevant more often than you would think in a workforce this mobile.
Victoria states it directly: if an employee stays with the business after it is sold or ownership transfers, their years of service still count towards long service leave accrual, and the new owner becomes responsible for any existing entitlement.
In an industry where venues change hands constantly and the head chef and the Tuesday closer often stay through three owners, that is a real line item in a sale. A buyer keeping the team is buying the accrued liability with them, and a seller who has never provisioned for it has been carrying an understated cost base. Our how much is my restaurant worth page covers the earnings and asset approaches this feeds into.
Victoria also sets the enforcement path: a claim believed to be under A$20,000 goes to the Industrial Division of the Magistrates' Court of Victoria, after a written letter of demand to the employer. The regulator is Workforce Inspectorate Victoria, renamed from Wage Inspectorate Victoria on 12 December 2025.
The Australian Capital Territory is doing something no other jurisdiction does to hospitality, and the date is close. The ACT runs portable long service leave through ACT Leave, where employers pay a levy on ordinary wages and the entitlement follows the worker between employers instead of resetting. Portable coverage extended to the services industry from 1 April 2025 under the Services Industry Scheme.
Accommodation and food services were due to enter on 1 July 2026. On 3 May 2026 the Minister for Skills, Training and Industrial Relations announced that the entry of the hair and beauty and accommodation and food services industries would be delayed until 1 January 2027, citing the conditions businesses are facing, and announced phased levy discounts for food and beverage businesses over the first three years of the scheme, which do not reduce workers' entitlements.
The structural point for an ACT operator is that portable long service leave is not a liability that crystallises at year seven or year ten. It is a quarterly levy and a quarterly return from the day you enter, on a workforce whose average tenure is short. A Canberra cafe that has never owed a cent of long service leave because nobody stays five years will owe the levy anyway.
A second gap we will not guess at. The levy rate and the discount schedule are published by ACT Leave in its Services Industry fact sheet and we could not read the rate on 29 September 2026. Get the current percentage from ACT Leave rather than from any article, including this one.
Four steps, and none of them need software.
One, list everyone with more than five years of continuous service, including casuals, and including anyone who stayed through a change of ownership. Two, total their ordinary hours since they started. Three, multiply by 0.8667 weeks a year, or run the Queensland hours formula above if your records are in hours rather than years. Four, price it at each person's current ordinary rate, not the rate they started on, because that is what the leave is paid at.
If the total surprises you, the surprise is the point. Long service leave is the one staff cost in hospitality that grows silently for a decade and then arrives as cash.
Two honest limits. If your longest serving employee has been with you three years, this is a note for future you, not a bill, and the hours are better spent on restaurant staff turnover, which is the reason hospitality tenure is short in the first place. And the connection between long service leave and answering the phone is weak. This is a payroll provision, not a phone problem. Skai Solutions is not going to pretend otherwise to get to a call to action.
What we will say is narrower and true: the admin hours a venue loses to interruptions are the same hours that never get spent on records, and Victoria and New South Wales both require long service leave records to be kept and produced on request. If your Tuesday is eaten by the phone, the records are usually what is missing.
This is general information read from the regulators on 29 September 2026, not legal or payroll advice. South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory each run their own act and are not covered here.
Do hospitality workers get long service leave?
Yes, but not from the award. Long service leave is not in the Hospitality Industry (General) Award or the Restaurant Industry Award and it is not a National Employment Standard. It comes from state and territory legislation, so the entitlement depends on where the venue is.
Is long service leave in the hospitality award?
No. The Hospitality Industry (General) Award does not provide long service leave. In New South Wales the Long Service Leave Act 1955 applies precisely because most private sector hospitality workers have no award-derived entitlement, so the state Act is the instrument that covers them.
How many weeks long service leave after 10 years?
In New South Wales, 2 months, and the Act defines a month as 4 1/3 weeks, which is 8.6667 weeks. In Queensland, 8.6667 weeks. In Victoria the entitlement vests at 7 years and accrues at 1 week per 60 weeks of service, which reaches the same 8.6667 weeks by the ten year mark.
Do casuals get long service leave in hospitality?
Yes. New South Wales names casual workers among those entitled under the Long Service Leave Act 1955, Queensland applies the same 10 year qualifying period to casual and regular part time employees, and Victoria includes casual service. Casual loading does not buy the entitlement out, because long service leave sits outside the award.
How is long service leave calculated for a casual?
Queensland publishes the formula: total ordinary hours worked, divided by 52, multiplied by 8.6667, divided by 10, gives the hours of long service leave. A casual averaging 25 hours a week for ten years has worked 13,000 ordinary hours, which comes to about 216.67 hours of leave.
Does long service leave transfer when a restaurant is sold?
In Victoria, yes. If an employee remains with the business after it is sold or ownership transfers, their years of service still count towards accrual and the new owner becomes responsible for any existing entitlement. That makes accrued long service leave a real line item in a venue sale.
What is portable long service leave in hospitality?
It is a scheme where the employer pays a levy and the entitlement follows the worker between employers rather than resetting. The ACT operates one through ACT Leave, and accommodation and food services enter its Services Industry Scheme on 1 January 2027 after a delay announced on 3 May 2026.
Do you get long service leave if you resign at 8 years?
In Victoria yes, because the entitlement vests at 7 years. In Queensland a plain resignation to take another job between 7 and 10 years does not qualify, because pro rata payment in that window applies only for listed reasons such as death, illness, a domestic or other pressing necessity, or dismissal for a reason other than conduct, capacity or performance.