Yahoo Finance Here’s how much you get paid to work in hotel quarantine
Victoria is currently advertising for hotel quarantine workers and is offering to pay as much as $85,000 for the 12-month contracts.
Those who take up the work will be required to escort international travellers to their hotels and check their temperatures, The Age reported.
It comes as Victoria prepares to reopen its border to international travellers, who will need to quarantine in hotels. International arrivals will be capped at 1,120 people a week in Melbourne, taking Australia’s overall weekly limit to around 8,000 arrivals.
Applications close at midnight on 8 December and interested applicants apply through the Department of Justice and Community Safety.
Workers will need to submit to regular Covid-19 testing and will have to submit to undergo tracing before they begin work, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said.
A new approach to hotel quarantine
Victoria recently suffered Australia’s worst Covid-19 outbreak, which plunged the state into a 112-day lockdown. An inquiry into the state’s hotel quarantine will release its final report on the quarantine failures on 21 December.
Andrews said Victoria will employ an “exclusive workforce”, and workers won’t be hired on a casual or part-time basis, limiting the risk of workers taking the disease to another workplace.
“We may well have groups, not necessarily every staff member, but some staff members who actually live in the hotel,” Andrews told the ABC.
“A bit of a fly-in-fly-out arrangement. We’ll advance contact trace all of those people and know who they live with and what the people that they live with do for a living.
“So someone working wouldn’t share a house with someone in an aged care facility, for example. All of that work is going on to make sure that when the program is reset, it is safe and I’m confident that that is what people will be able to do.”
Insecure work challenge
The Andrews government has also said Victoria faces an insecure work challenge, which means people may work multiple public-facing jobs just to earn enough money.
It recently announced a pilot program to provide sick and carers leave to some casual and insecure workers.
Workers in the cleaning, aged care and hospitality sectors will receive up to five days of paid leave under the scheme announced in the Victoria state budget.
"Insecure work is toxic," Andrews said.
“Insecure work isn’t just bad for those who work under those conditions, it’s bad for all of us and we pay a price for the fact that so many people – particularly those who work in public-facing jobs – do not have sick leave.”
Want to hear Australian influencers reveal their best finance tips? Join the Broke Millennials Club on Facebook, and receive one hot tip per day in December.
And if you want 2021 to be your best (financial) year yet, follow Yahoo Finance on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. Subscribe to the free Fully Briefed daily newsletter here.
