SCHEDULE 4 - Method of Determi SCHEDULE 4 - Method of Determining the Average Weekly Earnings of an Employee

Section 3

1.   For the purposes of this schedule, average weekly earnings means the average weekly earnings during the twelve months immediately preceding the incapacity or death, as the case may be, of an employee.

2.   Subject to this schedule, the average weekly earnings of an employee shall be computed in such manner as is best calculated to give the weekly rate at which the employee was being remunerated.

3.   *[Schedule 4 Clause 3 substituted by No. 106 of 1973, s. 5 ]*For the purposes of this schedule –

(a) in computing average weekly earnings, amounts paid for overtime worked by an employee shall be included, but any amounts paid to an employee at the discretion of his employer by way of bonus, gratuity, or other similar payment shall be excluded;

(b) where, by reason of the shortness of time during which an employee has been in the employment of his employer, or the terms of his employment, it is impracticable to compute the average weekly earnings of the employee under that employer during any relevant period under that employer, those average weekly earnings shall, for the purposes of this Act, be taken to be the average weekly earnings during that period by a person in the same grade employed at the same work by the same employer, or, if there is no person so employed, by a person in the same grade employed in the same class of employment in the same district;

(c) where an employee had entered into concurrent contracts of service with two or more employers under which he worked at one time for one of those employers and at another time for the other or another of those employers, or where an employee's employment had been of a casual nature, his average weekly earnings shall, subject to paragraph (d) of this clause, be computed as if his earnings under all those contracts or in the employment of his several employers were earnings in the employment of the employer for whom he was working at the time of his incapacity or death, as the case may be;

(d) where one of the contracts referred to in paragraph (c) of this clause is a full-time contract of service, the average weekly earnings of the employee who is a party to the contract shall be computed by reference only to the full-time contract of service;

(e) employment by the same employer shall be taken to mean employment by the same employer in the grade in which an employee was employed at the time of his incapacity or death, uninterrupted by absence from work due to illness or any other unavoidable cause, and an employee shall be deemed to have been employed in a new grade of employment whenever his rate of payment has been lawfully increased or decreased otherwise than by reason of a decision affecting the persons engaged in his grade of employment generally;

(f) where an employer has been accustomed to pay to an employee a sum to cover any special expenses entailed on him by the nature of his employment, the sum so paid shall not be reckoned as part of the earnings; and

(g) where an employee delivers to his employer a statement in writing, verified by statutory declaration, setting out the amount of his earnings during any period, that statement is evidence that that amount was the earnings of the employee during that period.