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Special category employees
Last updated August 2025
This chapter explains your employment obligations in relation to trainees, pieceworkers, employees with disabilities, children and junior employees.
Who are special category employees?
Special category employees are employees who fall within one of the following groups:
- apprentices or trainees (read more);
- pieceworkers (read more);
- employees with a disability (read more); or
- children (read more) or junior employees (read more).
When you employ special category employees, you have different obligations to those you have when employing other employees.
Caution: If you contravene the statutory provisions applicable to special category employees, you are likely to attract civil liability or, in the case of child employment legislation, criminal liability.
Important: Your obligations to unpaid workers, such as volunteers, interns and vocational placement students, also differ from your obligations to regular employees and the special category employees listed above. See the chapter Unpaid work for information on these types of workers.