People are working an additional 319 hours every year – for free
Australian employees have worked even more unpaid overtime this year than last year, according to the latest report from the Centre for Future Work. The research found that Australians are putting in an additional 6.1 hours per week of unpaid work, significantly higher than the 5.25 hours per week last year and the 4.62 hours in 2019. The total is equivalent to 319 hours every year, according to the study, and a massive $125 billion dollars of lost income for workers per year. On a fortnightly bases, each worker loses $461.60 in wage theft due to unpaid labour.
By age, younger workers (18 to 29) experienced the most unpaid overtime for rendering 8.17 hours per week. Dan Nahum, economist at the Centre for Future Work, said time theft could happen in ways such as arriving to work early, staying late, working through breaks, night and weekend work, even phone calls and emails out of hours.
"COVID-19 has made the situation worse, indicating work-from-home does not necessarily improve work life in favour of employees," said Nahum. "Instead, we're seeing further incursion of work into people's personal time and their privacy. In many cases it's making it easier for employers to undercut Australian minimum standards around hours, overtime, and penalty rates."
Read more: Overtime – it’s common, but is it legal?
The remote working arrangement also didn't help in terms of surveillance methods, with the pandemic further hiking the use of digital surveillance techniques to monitor their off-site employees. The report also revealed that 39% of employees are being monitored remotely. The study said employers should ensure their workers' privacy is protected amid workplace monitoring and shouldn’t be subjected to digital or electronic monitoring practices outside their working hours.
Meanwhile, the report also found nearly half of part-time and casual employees want more paid work, while 20% of the latter said they prefer to work fewer hours.
"If Australians want to stop this alarming theft of billions of hours of time, and hundreds of billions of dollars of income, policymakers need to strengthen workers’ power to demand reasonable, stable hours of limit, and fair payment for every hour they work," said Nahum. “This is all the more important with so many Australians working from their own homes.”
