UK workers do two million hours of unpaid overtime a year
Thursday, 05 January 2012 03:30
New research by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has shown that the amount of paid overtime available to Britons has decreased by almost a quarter since its peak in 2007.
The organisation found there were 54 million paid overtime hours before the recession, but this number declined to 41 million in 2011.
Some 5.3 million people worked an average of 7.2 hours a week for free in 2011, an increase on the figures from 1992, when 4.2 million employees regularly worked for nothing.
Workers in London and the south-east do the most unpaid overtime. The average amount of overtime worked by the 5.3 million people would be worth an extra £5,300 in wages if it was paid employment.
It is thought this is down to employers trying to save money by no longer offering the benefit in exchange for higher wages.
However, this has not stopped employees in the UK from working longer than their contract stipulates - last year, Britons gave bosses almost two billion hours of unpaid overtime, the TUC found.
The TUC is promoting its 'Work your propr hours day 2012.'
This is likely to be due to staff trying to show their value by working harder amid the tough economic climate, or being forced to take on more jobs after some of their colleagues have been let go.
However, the TUC points out that this unpaid overtime is worth the equivalent of a million jobs and bosses should not take advantage of their workers.
"We must find a way to improve the organisation of working life so that we can move away from some people working excessive overtime while others remain unemployed," said general secretary Brendan Barber.
In 2011, the Office for National Statistics found people in full-time employment in the UK work the third longest hours in the European Union.
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