Early childhood education and care supported bargaining agreement

On 10 December 2024, a Full Bench of the Commission approved the Early Childhood Education and Care Multi-Employer Enterprise Agreement 2024-2026 (ECEC Agreement). This is a type of supported bargaining agreement. It applies to the employers listed in Part G of the agreement and their children’s services and early childhood education sector employees.

This agreement is a workplace instrument.  

Certain employers and their employees in the early childhood education and care sector can join the coverage of this agreement. Once added, the agreement terms will apply to them.

To join this agreement, a variation must be made and then approved by the Commission.

A variation may be made:

• jointly by the employer and their employees, or
• by a union, if a majority of the employees to be covered want to be covered.

Employers and their employees are eligible to apply if the employees perform the following types of work in a long day care setting, including:

• work covered by the Children’s Services Award 2010
• work covered by the Educational Services (Teachers) Award 2020
• work performed by a qualified chef or cook not covered by the Children’s Services Award 2010 or the Educational Services (Teachers) Award 2020.

Employers and employees cannot be added to the coverage of this supported bargaining agreement if employees are working in the following settings:

• adjunct care
• a stand alone preschool or kindergarten
• occasional care
• out of hours school care
• vacation care
• mobile centres or
• stand alone early childhood intervention programs. 

To join this supported bargaining agreement, a variation to the agreement must be made to add employers and their employees.

The variation has no effect unless it is approved by us.

A variation to add employers and employees may be applied for:

• jointly by the employers and their employees, or
• by a union, if a majority of the employees to be covered want to be covered.

Learn more about varying supported bargaining agreements on the adding employer and their employees to a supported bargaining agreement page. 

To provide a predictable process for you, we have developed a monthly schedule to process applications to vary the ECEC multi-employer agreement to add employers and their employees to the agreement’s coverage.

Where possible, we will publish a single decision each month to cover applications we receive.

We will then create an updated version of the agreement, which you can provide to employees as part of the explanation of the proposed variations.

You can also use these updated versions of the agreement to accompany your application to us for the approval of the variation.

The below schedule gives a ‘cut-off’ date each month. Applications considered in that month’s decision will be those lodged with us prior to the cut-off date.

Applications lodged after the cut-off date will generally be included in the following month’s decision.

All applications will be considered individually on their merits. There is no certainty each application will be approved.

Use the following forms to apply to vary the supported bargaining agreement to add employers and their employees. 

Follow the instructions on each form. The form will explain how to lodge or submit it to us.

Changes to the “service” requirements for application and declarations

The Commission has recently modified the service requirements for the applications to vary the ECEC Agreement under section 216AA of the Fair Work Act to add employers and employees.

Without these modifications, applications of this kind, and declarations provided by the employer or employee organisations (Union), would need to be served, that is provided to, each of the employers who are at that time already covered by the ECEC Agreement.

The modified arrangements require the applicant employers (and the unions if they make a declaration) to provide a copy of the application and the associated declaration(s) to the following: 

If a copy of the application form and the associated declaration(s) have been provided to the contacts in the table above, there is no remaining requirement to provide a copy of the relevant application form and accompanying documents to each employer currently covered by the ECEC Agreement or those that are added later.

The following notice is also provided to the existing employers, and any employers who are later added.

The same arrangements will apply to any union declaration.

Learn more about these changes and some additional requirements in two recent orders made by the Commission:

• ADM2025/1
• ADM2025/2

When you apply to us to approve a variation to add employers and their employees to this supported bargaining agreement, we add details to this ‘variations in progress’ section.

On 28 January 2025, the first applications to vary the Early Childhood Education and Care Multi-Employer Enterprise Agreement to add employers and their employees to the coverage were approved. Details of the decision and variations can be found here [2025] FWCA 282 (PR783630).

Unofficial consolidated copy of the agreement 

To help you vary the ECEC multi-employer enterprise agreement to add employers and their employees, we have made an unofficial version of the agreement which has been consolidated by the Commission’s staff.  

When applications to vary the agreement to add employers and their employees are approved by the Commission, the names of those employers will be added to this unofficial version. 

You can find each employer that is covered by the agreement in part G of the below version (page 129). 

This was last updated on 28 January 2025.

Unofficial consolidated version – Early Childhood Education and Care Multi-Employer Enterprise Agreement