New research shows the average Australian is now working two months of unpaid overtime a year.
The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work has found employers are getting six hours of free work each week per employee.
When graphic designer James Clarkson first moved to Australia from Britain, he says he found himself working long hours for no reward.
“I was going home and pretty much going to sleep, getting back up and going to work. So, that was my life for a good couple of months. And, yeah, it does drain you,” Mr Clarkson said.
New research shows the average Australian is now working two months of unpaid overtime a year.
The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work has found employers are getting six hours of free work each week per employee.
The centre calls it an epidemic of time theft.
The report's author, economist Troy Henderson, says workers are doing more unpaid work than ever before.
I think, when you consider that Australians are effectively working two months each year for free, this is quite an alarming trend, because, if employers came up to you and asked you to work for two months without any pay, most workers are going to say no. And then if we add into that picture the wage stagnation in Australia, which even the Reserve Bank governor has been talking about, and concerns over insecure work, Australians simply can't afford to give away their time away for free,” he said.
The average of six hours’ unpaid work a week in 2018 is up from 5.1 hours in 2017 and 4.6 hours in 2016.
That news brought concerned reactions when SBS revealed it to people on the streets of Sydney.
“The tools aren't there to track it and to have a way to fight it,” said a worker. Another one added: “We also need to commute, and, if you factor those in, there's a lot of time that we don't get paid for.”
The report has found Australian employees will work a total of about 3.2 billion hours in unpaid overtime this year.
It found unpaid work is highest among the self-employed, at over eight hours a week, followed by full-time workers at seven hours a week.
Part-timers averaged over four hours without compensation, and casuals averaged almost three.
Dr Josh Healy, from the University of Melbourne's Centre for Workplace Leadership, says a number of pressures are driving people to work longer.
“Well, I think we're working a lot more for three potential reasons. One is that wages are growing very slowly, so we're feeling these cost-of-living pinches. We also have a dialogue, a narrative, around job loss due to automation and new technology that concerns people. And then we have a big class of people that are underemployed that are creating a new pressure, a new competition, for the good, secure jobs that means those who have them work longer.” Mr Healy said.
Mr Healy says working longer hours affects other areas of people's lives, too.
“This is likely to have implications for our families and our relationships. We're spending more time at work. We're working harder and in more intense environments. It might be affecting our health adversely. And it may well be affecting our communities. If we've got less time to do things out in our communities, then that's also a negative thing. So, this time we're contributing to work takes time away from other activities,” he added.
Under the law, any time worked over 38 hours a week must be compensated.
