Sally Rugg: Ex-political staffer who sued her boss for making her work too hard warns Australia is the ‘burn-out capital of the world’ and that hard work WON’T pay off – but older generations say Millennials should just harden up

A political executive who left her job saying she was overworked has warned that Australia is becoming the ‘burnout capital of the world’ despite older generations viewing the work-from-home generation as overworked.

Political activist Sally Rugg, chief of staff to Teal Independent MP Monique Ryan, sued her former boss for unreasonable working conditions, which sometimes included working more than 70 hours a week.

In April, she was awarded nearly $100,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

Ms Rugg says it has become normal for Australians to work excessive hours, despite believing there is little benefit to doing so.

“The hours Australians are putting in are totally off the charts,” Ms Rugg told 60 Minutes reporter Tom Steinfort.

Australia is one of the burnout capitals of the world.

“There are about four million Australians who work more than 45 hours a week, two million work more than 50 hours a week and one million people work more than 60 hours a week.”

“There’s a large segment of the population that works really long hours and it’s so completely normalized that it doesn’t really raise an eyebrow.”

Ms Rugg said she “respects” how hard boomers worked during their time in the labor market, but said they also had an easier time when it came to living costs.

She explained that owning a home had become “almost unimaginable” for someone her age and that she, like many millennials, saw no benefit in working longer hours if there was no pay.

This was compared to older generations who were able to have children and even buy a family home on a quarter acre lot on a single income.

“For people of my generation, the promise that if you work hard, it pays off… that idea is becoming more and more a myth,” Rugg said.

“If this hard work isn’t really going to pay off as we’ve been promised, why should we sacrifice time with our loved ones?”

But as millennials and Gen Z battled bosses to restore work-life balance, older generations believed the broken soy latte generation is better off complaining than working.

New York University economics professor Scott Galloway argues that the idea that people can have a good work-life balance and get ahead financially is a “myth” that younger generations need to debunk.

“One thing that highly successful people have in common is that they work exceptionally hard, and that takes a trade-off,” he said.

‘What I would like to say to young people is that they can have everything, but not everything at once.

‘If you’re ambitious, you have to work hours.’

Professor Galloway also warned of the apparent permanence of work-from-home culture long after the Covid rationale had subsided, believing that remote work will lead to further unemployment.

“It’s terrible for young people, working remotely,” he said.

“There is just one basic reality: if your job can be moved from Sydney to Melbourne, it can also be moved to Manila and then Mumbai.

“So be clear if you want to work remotely then you’ll have more power and if you can get that job, great, you’ll make less money on top of the potential job losses.”

Professor Galloway added that people are “getting used to the flexibility” of working remotely, but they are “lacking a certain level of accountability” that would allow them to progress.

He said that even getting ready for work and going to the office brought structure and routine to one’s life.

Scott Farquhar, co-founder of the Atlassian billionaire, disagrees: he rarely visits the office even once, despite living in central Sydney.

The technology company’s employees also enjoy flexible work arrangements, with many working remotely full-time.

“I work from home all the time and come to the office about once a quarter,” Farquhar, 43, told 60 Minutes.

The tech entrepreneur shuns the office despite living just 4 miles away in Point Piper, on Sydney Harbour, where he owns a $130 million mansion near a ferry stop that provides direct water transport to Circular Quay.

Ironically, even Eric Yuan, CEO of video conferencing company Zoom – which enables working from home – has instructed staff to go to the office at least two days a week if they live within 50 miles.

If the Zoom rule were applied to Sydney, staff wishing to independently purchase a house to live in within a reasonable distance of the city would be limited to an apartment.

That’s because houses 50 miles away from the city are out of reach an average income earner with a salary of $95,581.

Woy Woy on the Central Coast, 84 km north of central Sydney, has an average house price of $898,306 so expensive that an average worker, with a mortgage deposit of 20 percent, would have a debt-to-income ratio of 7.5.

That’s well above the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s “six” threshold for mortgage stress.

Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn faced backlash from staff this year for demanding they come to the office two or three times a week.

In May, he told the 49,000 employees to be in the office at least 50 percent of the time from July.

Mr. Comyn, who earns $10.4 million a year, followed the lead of NAB chief executive Ross McEwan, who admitted he expected his senior staff to return to the bank’s headquarters five days a week.