Workers with multiple jobs receive less: ACTU

People working two jobs are often worse off by thousands of dollars a year than workers in a single job.

ACTU Secretary Sally McManus. Picture: AAP

People working two jobs are often worse off by thousands of dollars a year than workers in a single job.

According to ACTU analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data, the median income for workers in two jobs at the same time was $44,531, compared with $48,344 for workers in one job.

The analysis found workers doing three or four jobs at the same time were worse off, earning median incomes of $36,791 and $37,706.

The ABS revealed last month that the number of secondary jobs in Australia rose to more than one million in the December quarter. This represented more than 7 per cent of all jobs worked in the economy, the highest rate recorded since this series began in 2010.

The ACTU said workers were being forced into insecure work to make ends meet and were struggling to keep up with the cost of living. ACTU secretary Sally McManus said the Coalition had “created a country where low-paid, insecure work is the norm for many working people.

“(It) is taking us down the American path, where working people have to work two, three and even more jobs just to earn the bare minimum to cover living costs.”

Meanwhile, the Australian Building and Construction Commission has taken legal action, alleging the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union and five of its ACT officials attempted to coerce a Canberra-based civil engineering company to make an enterprise agreement with the union.

The ABCC alleges the union and its officials — ACT secretary Jason O’Mara, assistant branch secretary Zachary Smith and organisers Kenneth Miller, Lorenzo White and Joshua Bolitho — organ­ised an unlawful picket to coerce the company to make an enterprise agreement.

At the time of the alleged contraventions, Dale & Hitchcock Civil Engineering and Landscapes was undertaking excavation work on the $300 million Constitution Place project.

The ABCC alleges a group of 12 and 20 people, including the officials, engaged in obstructive picketing by parking two cars in front of the main entrance gate to the project and linking arms to block pedestrian and vehicle access.