Be honest with yourself: are you double-checking your pay slip – and your bank balance – every single pay day?
If the answer is no, it’s reeeeally time you started taking the time to do so. How else can you sleep easy at night, confident that you’re being paid every dollar you’re entitled to?
While you’re at it, there’s one more really important thing to be checking after every pay day: your super account!
You had me at Pay Day Super
That’s right: your super must now be paid on the same day that you get paid your wages. (Previously, your employer only had to pay your super every three months.)
Pay Day Super kicked in on 1 July. That means, if you’ve been paid recently, now’s the time to be checking your super account to make sure your employer is following the law.
Depending on your regular pay cycle (for most workers; weekly, fortnightly or monthly) you should have received – or very soon be receiving – your super contribution from your employer, in line with your wages or salary.
It must reach your super account within seven business days of your pay day.
The change is a huge win for workers that makes it much easier to detect unpaid super – plus, it means a bigger balance is compounding sooner; boosting your long-term retirement savings!
Help me, help you(r retirement)
Payday super didn’t happen by accident: it was won after years of campaigning by union members.
This win is just one of a bunch of improvements to super that union members have fought for and secured in recent years.
Other wins include super on paid parental leave, a stronger enforceable right to super and a boost to super for low-paid workers, coming next year.
Super is a union legacy, after all – years of union campaigns for retirement schemes, and then universal super, peaked in 1992 when unions won the Superannuation Guarantee Legislation.
That established that employers must make a minimum rate of contribution (called the ‘super guarantee (SG) contribution’) to their employee’s super accounts. At the time, it was 3% of workers’ earnings – it’s now 12%.
Generally, most workers are eligible for the SG contribution. It doesn’t matter if you’re full time, part time or casual – except that if you’re under 18 years old, you’re only eligible if you work more than 30 hours in a week.
Australia’s super system is one of the best in the world! But there is still work to do, like eliminating wage theft, via stolen super. Pay Day Super will go a long way to help with that.
You complete me
So there you have it: your pay and your super are finally the power couple they were always meant to be.
Don’t let your employer split them up.
