Record levels of unpaid overtime saves employers £26.9bn, says TUC
Employers had benefited from record levels of unpaid overtime provided by their workers last year in a further extension of the long-hours culture that has characterised the British workplace, the TUC said today.
More than five million people gave free overtime worth £26.9bn by staying at work longer than their contracted hours – the highest number since records began in 1992.
The TUC, whose figures were based on analysis of official statistics, said the previous record was in 2001, when five million employees worked unpaid overtime.
The statistics measured hours worked in the 12 months to mid-2008, before the economic recession took hold. Officials said unpaid overtime was likely to increase this year among workers who were feeling increasingly insecure about keeping their jobs. But the trend will not apply in companies that are facing contracting order books and have had to impose a shorter working we on staff.
The TUC said the average amount of unpaid overtime last year was seven hours and six minutes a week, or an extra £5,139 a year to workers if they had been properly remunerated.
The biggest increases in unpaid overtime were in London, the East Midlands and Eastern England.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “After years of progress, the numbers doing unpaid overtime has increased for the second year in a row. This is disappointing.
“But while some of this is due to the long-hours culture that still dogs too many British workplaces, the recession will now be making many people scared of losing their job in the year ahead and joining the ever-growing dole queue. Inevitably, people will be putting in extra hours if they think it can help protect against redundancy or keep their employer in business.”
The TUC calculated that if those who worked extra hours for free put all their overtime together at the start of the year, they would not get paid until 27 February.
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