Average Aussie worker does $21,000 worth of unpaid overtime every year
Australian workers do more overtime than almost any other OECD nation and it's costing them an average of $21,500 a year in unpaid labour, a large-scale survey has found.
Of the 5000 New South Wales employees surveyed by Unions NSW, 86 per cent reported doing unpaid overtime every week.
On average, they were working nine hours of extra work each week, equating to more than 11 weeks unpaid for their employer a year.
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Australian employees are doing an average of nine hours of unpaid overtime every week. Getty
Based on an average annual income of $96,660, this amounts to $21,563 in free labour every year.
This overtime did not just come in the form of arriving early or staying back late, with two in three workers also doing overtime on weekends.
Workers also reported that, on average, they were skipping lunch breaks three times a week.
However, the employees surveyed didn't believe they could simply refuse requests to do unpaid overtime, with the majority (64 per cent) believing that refusing a request to perform unpaid overtime was career-limiting.
"Unpaid overtime has been justified as a trade-off for higher salaried wages, or a necessity for junior employees in professional occupations with potential for high bonus or promotion opportunities," the Unions NSW report stated.
"However, the findings outlined in this report challenge this justification and demonstrates wage, industry, and type of employment does not impact significantly on the excessive unpaid hours a worker undertakes."
The survey found employees earning under $70,000 per year are doing 7.3 hours of unpaid overtime per week, while those working in low-paid industries such as hospitality, retail and clerical work are doing over six hours of unpaid overtime per week.
Unions NSW is calling on the government to take action to improve employee rights, including legislating protection for employees to refuse to perform unpaid overtime.
The proposal would be limited to employees covered by an enterprise agreement or earning less than the high-income threshold of $167,000.
The union body also wants the mandated four weeks of annual leave for full-time workers increased to five, and stricter record-keeping and reporting requirements around overtime introduced.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Business NSW both declined to comment on the union body's proposals.
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