Give workers their time back! New campaign for 5 weeks’ leave   
24 September 2026
Finance Sector Union

Unpaid work
Unpaid overtime has quietly become the new normal for Australian workers, including in the finance sector.   

88% of workers are regularly working beyond their paid hours, with workers doing an average of 7.8 hours of unpaid work every week. That’s more than 11 weeks of free work every year – worth almost $22,000 in lost wages.

Unions NSW have launched a new campaign to give workers their time back.

Will you sign the Unions NSW petition calling for changes to give workers their time back?

Specifically, union members are calling on the NSW and Australian Governments to:

Increase annual leave to 5 weeks
Give NSW workers the same number of public holidays as workers in other states
For many workers, working for free is no longer an occasional request. It’s becoming an expectation – and finance workers will understand this all too well.

According to a new Unions NSW report:

77% believe their workplace relies on them doing unpaid overtime.
78% fear their career or employment would be negatively affected if they refused.
75% regularly work unpaid overtime on weekends.
63% say their workplace doesn’t even have a formal overtime policy.
At the same time, new technologies like AI are changing the way we work. Workers are being asked to do more, faster, with productivity gains too often translating into more work – rather than more time back.

Working for free should never be the price of keeping your job.

Looks like the union idea of 5 weeks leave is well justified.   

Australian industries and even small Companies or Businesses have crashed and burned from Unionism.

whiteknight wrote on Sep 27^th, 2026 at 6:50pm:


Nope. Labour costs are too high!
Industries can't compete with overseas competitors.
Australia is weak.

whiteknight wrote on Sep 27^th, 2026 at 6:29pm:


6 weeks is more realistic.

Well said greeggerypeccary, also maybe an extra public holiday, might be a good idea.  Australia has far too few public holidays.   

Lifetime security on the beach and in tent cities!  That's the future for you!  Once the robots take over and the usual idiots who cannot plan effectively can't work out that there is no profit in a society where people don't profit from work etc.

No general prosperity - no real profit for anyone...

whiteknight wrote on Sep 27^th, 2026 at 6:29pm:


As a shift worker then broken shift worker whose roster involved working most weekends & public holidays I was getting 5 weeks annual leave from back in 1982 until I retired in 2019.

So White Knight are the Unions going to go for 6 weeks annual leave for those shift workers who work similarly to what I did for all those years?

If not then I would say NO to an extra week for other non shift workers.