Jibba,
Not talking up the wage at all but offering reality, management know how much you earn, they pay it. So it does not help anyone by providing figures that are wrong like saying you only earn $42K per annum. If you were to make a public campaign about how low you are paid it will backfire as again it would be easy to prove you are paid at least $10K more a year.
I'am not saying the wage is adequate, thats for each individual person to make that decision.
DTA is paid per hour away from home base so includes the time you sleep on an overnight, not just actual duty hours.
So at max hours including two overnights a week (8 a roster cycle) you could easily be paid for 50 hours dta a week.
So 30 hours duty a week and an additional 10 hours per overnight sleeping equals 50 hours dta entitlement.
50 X 5.6 X 46 working weeks a year (you are entitled to six weeks leave)= $12880 DTA
At ports with less overnights you would get less DTA but it still would be a large addition to income and as stated in earlier comments the bracket of $5K-$10K additional is reasonable.
Last edited by 43Inches; 28th Aug 2010 at 09:19.