Coronavirus: iso hotel workers face ban on second jobs

Steven Marshall will consider banning hotel quarantine workers from holding second jobs after requesting advice from health experts.

South Australia Premier Steven Marshall. Picture: Emma Brasier

Steven Marshall will consider banning hotel quarantine workers from holding second jobs after requesting advice from health experts — as federal Labor, the Greens and union movement ramp up pressure on the states to pay these employees more.

In a new row over the future of the country’s hotel quarantine schemes, Labor employment spokesman Brendan O’Connor said states and the Morrison government should “bear the costs” so there was no incentive for those employees to work elsewhere. ACTU secretary Sally McManus went further, saying security guards in COVID-19 quarantine hotels should be paid more than the award minimum because it was a more complex, riskier job.

“If a government insists on contracting arrangements, they can also insist on jobs with full-time hours and higher pay and then governments would need to implement maximum oversight to ensure this is happening,” Ms McManus said.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry backed the right of employees to work multiple jobs but said if any government moved to restrict that right for hotel quarantine workers, it would need to compensate them. “Compensation would need to be funded by government as this is a measure in the public interest,” ACCI chief executive James Pearson said.

The political debate follows the failure of quarantine in South Australia where two hotel workers became infected while also working second jobs in the Woodville Pizza Bar, the suburban restaurant at the centre of a cluster that closed the entire state last week.

The South Australian Premier told The Australian he had last Thursday written to the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee seeking urgent advice about whether to prevent workers in quarantine hotels holding other employment. Such a ban was one of the key recommendations of the Victorian inquiry into that state’s quarantine scheme.

Mr Marshall said there were complex issues around any ban that needed to be addressed: whether hotel staff would effectively have to live in permanent isolation outside of work, and whether it made any difference if they were working second jobs or doing other activities such as recreational sport, or simply living normally with their families and socialising with friends.

He said he would be guided by the advice from the AHPPC.

“We were the first to move for mandatory weekly testing (of hotel quarantine workers) and we would not have identified the second infected worker within the Stamford Hotel if we had not put in that testing,” Mr Marshall said.

Mr O’Connor said the fact a second hotel worker was a Spanish national on a temporary visa and excluded from accessing federal government support like JobKeeper would have encouraged him to take a second job and lie about his ­circumstances.

“The lessons … is we should not have a situation where security guards for quarantine are in multiple workplaces,” he told Sky News. “The fact we would allow a system that would make us close the economy down could cost this economy billions of dollars, businesses hitting the wall, people being unemployed — it seems to me it is better to spend a dollar and save $100.”

Greens leader Adam Bandt said insecure work and privatisation were “spreading the virus” and his party would support moves to legislate a higher minimum wage on which everyone could live. Health Minister Greg Hunt said the pay and conditions of hotel quarantine workers were a matter for the states, as agreed by national cabinet.

A separate stoush, between Gladys Berejiklian and the Morrison government, has emerged over whether places in hotel quarantine should be reserved for international students and skilled migrants next year.

Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said stranded Australians had to come first, while the NSW Premier wants a third of all rooms reserved for other groups.

SA Labor leader Peter Malinauskas said Mr Marshall needed to admit that the state’s hotel quarantine had failed.

Mr Malinauskas wants quarantine hotels in the Adelaide CBD to be shut down to reduce the chance of community transmission, suggesting former detention centres such as Inverbrackie and Woodside in the Adelaide Hills were potentially better locations.

Daniel Andrews described the state‘s new hotel quarantine program, which will accept international arrivals from December 7, as “first class”.

“People who will work exclusively for us and no one else,” the Victorian Premier said on Sunday.

Mr Andrews said another precaution would be vetting of potential staff‘s contacts before they were hired, including occupations of housemates to exclude someone who lived with an aged care worker.

He said the government would also carry out advance contact tracing on potential staff members to determine who they were likely to spend time with.

Additional reporting: Tessa Akerman