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The Australian Taxi Drivers Association

Representing Australian Taxi Drivers and their Regional Associations.

DRIVER $$$ : HOW MUCH DOES A CABBIE EARN ?

After years of evasion and misinformation from everyone except the ATDA, there is now firm evidence , accepted by the State Governments of NSW and Victoria that taxi drivers earn an average of $10.90 an hour in Sydney, and $12.50 an hour in Victoria. Anecdotally the range is wide - from as lttle as $5 an hour for a daytime Country cabbie, to $30 an hour on a Sydney Friday night. Whatever. The hard cruel fact is that taxi drivers average five dollars an hour below the Australian Minimum Wage, and with no Holiday or Sick Pay.

Logically we all work to make a living. Ideally we enjoy the work we regularly do, but we don't do it for fun. We all work for the dollar.

Why then, if he only gets $11.00 an hour, does the taxi driver drive a taxi.??

Firstly, if he or she works a lot of hours, it's a lot of money. Six shifts of up to twelve hours can bring in up to $1000 a week in cash, on a good week, but, over the year it's an average of $700. GST is payable, Income Tax is payable. Fuel and Bailment gets paid daily out of gross fares, and it leaves about the same cash in hand than the average worker. But it takes 70 hours of driving, every week. No holidays, no sickkies, no days off. No Superannuation.

Just one infringement for Stopping on any major city street to pick up or set down a passenger equals two days work !!

A fare evasion is money the driver loses. A fare evasion by a train or bus traveller costs the community money, but not the bus or train driver. Why not -- because he is an employee.

In Australia, taxi drivers are not counted as employees. We sure are workers, but we sure don't get treated as employed workers. We are some peculiar breed of "Bailees" treated as sub-contactors who are somehow expected to set aside enough from that $11.00 an hour to provide their own Holiday Pay, Sick pay, Superannuation and (laugh) Long Service Leave. Penalty payments for shift work late at night, on Public Holidays, or "danger" money are simply a non-event.