A glamorous high school dropout has revealed she earns more than $1770 per week working as a lollipop lady – a job which can pay up to $130,000 per year.
Belinha Ferreira uploaded a video to TikTok on Wednesday evening detailing how much she makes each day controlling traffic at constructions sites in Melbourne.
In a series of text captions placed over clips of the 21-year-old dancing in her high-vis uniform, she outlined the number of hours she worked versus how much she was paid.
Pictured: Belinha Ferreira, 21, working at a construction site where she is paid well above minimum wag
Her largest pay packet was $544 for 13 hours of work, while her smallest was for eight hours of work for $255 – which is about $12 higher than minimum wage at $32 per hour.
She worked about 46 hours that week, which is eight hours longer than a regular desk job, but Ms Ferreira explained in the comments that she is often paid overtime.
‘I make however much I can make when I can cop the hours,’ she wrote.
‘I do get overtime hours a lot which results in more money.’
Ms Ferreira (pictured) said she dropped out of school in Year 10, but she now earns more than teachers
Belinha Ferreira (pictured) said standing up for hour is tough, but she perseveres with pain killers
The young woman also revealed she is given travel and meal allowances on top of her pay packet.
One social media user was baffled as to how Ms Ferreira wound up controlling traffic.
‘Tell me you didn’t try in school,’ they wrote.
The young woman replied: ‘True cos I dropped out in Year 10.’
The user piped up again and asked if she had any regrets.
‘Do you regret it? I don’t know what I would do with my life if I did that,’ they said.
Again, the construction worker replied: ‘Not at all, to be honest.’
An ex traffic controller asked how she manages the long hours.
‘How do you deal with standing for all those hours? I had to quit because it was so painful,’ she asked.
Ms Ferreira wrote: ‘I honestly push through it after the eighth hour and if it’s really bad I’ll have Nurofen and I’m fine.’
Last year it was revealed that traffic controllers in Melbourne make at least $105,000, depending on project costs.
Unions say wages are just a fraction of those cost and they are deserved because workers do long hours in dangerous conditions.
Belinha Ferreira (pictured) said she doesn’t regret drooped out of school at all
Others in Sydney said they earned $130,000 a year and some patrolling the lonely outback highways of the Northern Territory almost as much.
One Sydney woman previously told Daily Mail Australia that she ditched her job as a teacher to become a traffic controller.
‘I was looking for a change of lifestyle. I was working as a teacher but this pays a lot more.’
One ‘lollipop lady’, Amy Dowsett, has raked in $130,000 a year since joining the trade.
Unions say wages are just a fraction of the cost and they are deserved because workers do long hours in dangerous conditions
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union member earns over $40 an hour and also receives a $45 per day travel allowance and a $22 meal allowance.
Depending on the size of the project, she is also paid a site allowance of between $2.10 and $3.95 per hour.
Pay varies from state to state, but workers can pocket about $26 an hour to $55 an hour depending on the job, according to online job site Indeed. The jobs usually include penalty rates, allowances and superannuation.
The salary is justified though, industry insiders say, as traffic controllers have to stand outside in all weather and they generally cop abuse from the public.