Shortage of Staff Leading to Higher Public Pay Expenses in Billions

Overtime for New South Wales (NSW) public-sector workers has snowballed, adding billions to the state’s pay bill and increasing the risk of job-related injuries and burnout.

Widespread staff shortages in a series of key agencies has been helping to drive the rapid rise in extra hours among workers over the past three years, according to a NSW audit office report.

Between July 2020 and mid-2023, overtime expenses for staff in the bulk of the state’s public workforce blew out by 40 percent—compared to a rise of 16 percent in overall salaries and wages.

One trainee junior medical officer worked more than double their standard hours in the 2022/23 financial year for a total of 2156 hours of overtime, the report said.

A number of other frontline workers, including correctional officers, paramedics and firefighters did more than 1000 hours of overtime in the 12-month period.

But the report, released on Dec. 20, also highlighted high rates of overtime in other agencies, including Transport for NSW, largely due to “unplanned staff shortages.”

One senior IT analyst at the transport department worked an extra 79 percent in overtime on top of their regular hours.

The reasons given for the high overtime rates for the various roles included resourcing constraints, unfilled rosters and the workload demands due to the number of government projects under way.

The combined overtime bill for 25 agencies covering the vast majority of the state’s 430,000 public-sector employees was $1.2 billion (US$0.8 billion) in 2022/23.

A spokesman for acting Treasurer Courtney Houssos said it was no surprise agencies were reporting severe staff shortages as a reason for high overtime costs.

“The previous Liberal-National government’s wage cap suppressed the public sector’s ability to deliver the essential services the people of NSW rely on,” he said in a statement.

The Labor government was working to fix the recruitment crisis in the public service with higher wages and other benefits for workers, the spokesman said.

NSW Public Service Association assistant general secretary Tony Wright also blamed the wage cap and job cuts under the former government for the “astronomical” increase in overtime.

“Overtime is never a long-term fix to staffing shortages and the situation we have now is completely unsustainable,” Mr. Wright told AAP.

But shadow treasurer Damien Tudehope put the overtime increase down to billions of dollars pumped into various programs during the COVID-19 pandemic to support households and businesses under the coalition.

“This required additional output by the NSW public service which was recognised by additional COVID wage payments,” Mr. Tudehope said.

The audit office warned staff consistently working large amounts of overtime could be at risk of poor mental and physical health.

“They may be more likely to suffer burn-out, stress related and other health conditions, and have an increased risk of occupational injury,” the report said.

Despite those risks, one-fifth of the agencies had no policy on the use of overtime nor any procedure for monitoring overtime hours.