In our increasingly flexible workforce, it's not just Uber drivers and Airtaskers who are at risk of underpayment, overwork and poor conditions.

The upcoming federal election will see a huge temporary workforce swing into action to ensure the wheels of democracy turn smoothly. This was also the case for the recent NSW election, where 20,749 casual staff were engaged. If you assume that all of these workers were provided with good wages and conditions, you would be wrong.

I was one of 10,107 election officials who worked on the NSW polling day, 23 March. These are the people who mark off your name when you attend to cast your vote. At first glance, the pay rate for one day's work ($340.96) seemed generous but, on closer inspection, for me it worked out to be below the $18.93 hourly minimum wage.

One of the problems is that the day lasts from 7:15am "until all tasks are completed on election night". For me, that was around 10:30pm, but for others it can be midnight or 1am.

Someone who worked until 10:45pm would've earned $18.18 per hour (before the 25 per cent casual loading is applied). This is $0.75 per hour lower than the minimum wage. Someone who worked until 12:45am earned only $16.04 per hour, which is $2.89 below what our Government has deemed the absolute minimum a worker should be paid.

Fatigued workers counting your vote

The work of an election official is not difficult but requires high levels of concentration. As with all work involving the public, there are moments of satisfaction (flipping the huge book of names to the exact page needed), periods of monotony (my polling station saw nearly 3000 people checked off by three or four people across the day) and the occasional stressful incident (it turns out not everyone enjoys exercising their right to vote).

After polling venues close, the same staff immediately move on to vote-sorting and counting. This is a massive task — unfolding ballot papers, sorting them, counting them and packaging them up to be sent for double checking and final counting in the days to come.

This work is done by people who have already been working for 11 hours and are facing four to six more.

Not everyone enjoys voting and electoral officials can bear the brunt of it. ( Australian Electoral Commission )

Underpaid training, few breaks

On top of the base pay, the NSW Electoral Commission (NSWEC) pays a 9.5 per cent cash loading if a worker doesn't reach the $450/month needed to trigger the superannuation guarantee. A meal allowance is also paid for those who work more than nine hours (which most election officials would).

The $28.29 training fee was supposed to compensate us for a one-hour training, only it took me three: not only does this work out to be pittance wages, but it's misleading for workers planning their time.

The conditions I experienced left a lot to be desired. My polling place was hot and airless. We were not provided with adequate tables to sort the massive upper-house papers, meaning we were working in unergonomic ways when already physically and mentally fatigued.

As we would only finish work once we had finished sorting, there was no incentive to take the breaks that we all desperately needed.

Some simple solutions

Many of these problems could be solved by employing different teams for the daytime polling station work and the evening vote-sorting and counting. This would mean fresh energy, plus splitting the training into two manageable parts.

Another suggestion to save many hours of work would be encouraging voters to only fold their ballot paper once. You might laugh but, with millions of ballot papers, the difference between one and four folds is hours and hours of work.

I won't be working at the federal election, but the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) pay rate for the same role is better. Not only is the day rate higher ($434.98) but it's specified to end at 11pm. This works out to $22.49 per hour (before the 25 per cent casual loading is added) which is comfortably above the minimum wage.

No cash in lieu of superannuation is offered however and, funnily enough, this day rate is just $15.02 below the $450 rate that would prompt payment of superannuation, a real shame for those gig economy workers who are already missing out on super.

The AEC did not respond to a request for comment.

The NSWEC noted that their Fatigue Management Guidelines (which do not appear to be publicly available) state that work on election day should finish no later than 11pm (ie: a shift of nearly 16 hours) and that departures from this will be examined.

However, this was not communicated to workers and conflicts with Safe Work Australia guidelines that advise against work longer than 12 hours duration, especially in uncomfortable conditions.

NSWEC noted that they implemented separate day and evening teams for the election in 2015 but this resulted in "high attrition rates and an inability to attract and retain staff".

The Federal Government is seeking to ensure that the gig economy is not depriving Australia of tax income. It would do well to check that government agency casual workers are getting a fair deal.

Vivienne Pearson is a freelance writer.