The Centre for Future Work’s 12th annual Go Home on Time Day report shows that, despite total work-hours falling and much of the workforce shifting to ‘work from home’, Australians are currently putting in an average 5.25 hours of unpaid work every week – the equivalent of 7 weeks of full-time work per person, per year.

The report calls for additional protections for people working from home, including limits on hours, overtime pay when relevant, allowances for extra home office expenses, and better OHS rules for home work.

Key Findings:

• Even though total work hours have fallen, and much work has shifted to home, demands for unpaid overtime remain strong
  • On average, workers reported working 5.25 hours of unpaid work per week—an increase from 4.6 in 2019
  • This equates to 273 hours per year, or over 7 weeks of full-time work
  • At the economy-wide level, this equates to $98.6 billion in lost income
• 70% of people doing work from home, are doing at least some of it non-work hours
• 21% of workers indicated that their employers’ expectations of their availability had increased during the COVID-19 crisis
• 28% of workers said their family and/or caring responsibilities had increased as a result of COVID-19
  • Of those employees who had additional caring responsibilities, 27% of men had not received time allowances from their employer to do so. But almost half (45%) of women had not—evidence of an increasing double burden for women
  • 16% of respondents whose employers made time allowances for caring responsibilities reported having lost pay if they were permitted to accommodate caring responsibilities
  • Men were more likely to get flexibility from their employer and retain the same pay (57% of men with increased caring responsibilities), compared to women (39%)

“This year our annual survey of working hours has highlighted an insidious trend: even when you are ‘home’, unpaid overtime is still rife,” said Dan Nahum, economist at the Centre for Future Work and author of the report.

“For many, the reality of working from home is more like living at work.

“One-third of workers indicated that, post-COVID, they expect to work from home more. But without adequate rules and protections, this risks a further incursion of work into people’s personal time, poorer health and safety standards, and greater polarisation between those jobs that can be conducted from home and those that cannot.

“Employers have a duty of care to the worker, regardless of the location of employment, so it is incredibly concerning—for both employers and employees—that 14% of people working from home indicated their home workspace was not appropriate or not safe.

“COVID-19 has clearly heightened the challenge facing workers of balancing their paid jobs, with their responsibilities at home. Our research shows that working from home is no panacea for this balancing act – in fact, in some ways it makes the problem harder.”

New economic research shows up to 12,000 community service jobs are at risk due to the Federal Government’s failure to confirm whether federal funding for community service organisations will be maintained.

The new report released today by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work demonstrates the economic importance of Commonwealth pay-equity funding at a time when these community services are critical to Australia’s pandemic-damaged economy.

Key Findings:

• The Federal Government is yet to confirm whether it will continue $576.5 million in supplemental funding for federally-supported community services, currently set to expire in the current (2020-21) financial year.
• This special funding was part of the Commonwealth government’s legislated 9-year timetable to phase in pay equity wage adjustments in community services.
• If this funding is not renewed (either by incorporation into a higher level of core funding for affected organisations, or through the extension of explicit pay equity supplements), the resulting funding shortfall will undermine and reverse the progress that has been made toward pay equity since the 2012 pay equity order.
• The loss of federal pay equity supplements would inevitably produce some combination of staffing cuts and wage cuts, as organisations respond to such a significant loss of funding.

“If experienced fully through staff cuts, the end of federal supplements would result in the loss of close to 12,000 jobs in federally-supported community organisations,” said Dr. Jim Stanford, director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work.

“Alternatively, if the brunt of the funding cut is experienced through effective wage reductions it would reduce annual incomes for federally-funded community service workers by as much as $15,000 for full-time staff.

“To put up to 12,000 community service jobs at risk, or force community service workers to take a $15,000 a year pay cut in the middle of global pandemic and an economic recession is both heartless and economically self-destructive,” Dr. Stanford said.

The Centre for Future Work report also found that the broad health and social services sector (which includes most of these community service organisations) has reduced the gender pay gap by more than any other industry in the years since the pay equity reform was announced.

Those past gains will be undermined and reversed unless federal funding consistent with new pay equity norms is quickly confirmed.