UK employers claimed £26 billion of free labour last year because of workers doing unpaid overtime, according to new analysis published by the TUC (Trades Union Congress).
UK employers claimed £26 billion of free labour last year because of workers doing unpaid overtime, according to new analysis published by the TUC (Trades Union Congress).
The research was published on the TUC’s recent 20th annual Work Your Proper Hours Day. On that day, workers are encouraged to take the breaks they are entitled to and finish their shifts on time. And managers are encouraged to support staff by setting reasonable workloads and putting in place workplace policies to protect against burnout.
The key findings of the report include:
- Unpaid overtime is a problem for millions of workers: 3.8 million people did unpaid overtime in 2023, putting in an average of 7.2 unpaid hours a week. For those workers, that’s equivalent on average to £7,200 a year of wages going unpaid for work done.
- Occupations with most unpaid overtime in 2023: This year teachers top the list for both the proportion of staff doing unpaid overtime (40%) and the average weekly overtime across all employees (4.4 hours). Chief executives, managers and directors feature strongly, suggesting that the additional responsibilities of senior staff are not properly managed by employers.
- Unpaid overtime is more common in the public sector: 1 in 6 public sector workers (16.7%) did unpaid overtime in 2023, compared to 1 in 9 (11.9%) in the private sector. Public sector staff gave £11 billion worth of unpaid overtime to meet the needs of service users. That is an average of more than 10 million hours each week of unpaid overtime in our public services.
- Regional variation: In 2023, London had the highest proportion of workers doing unpaid overtime, at 18.8%, compared to 13.2% nationally.
TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said: “Most workers don’t mind putting in extra hours from time to time, but they should be paid for it. Part of the problem is that some employers fail to record the overtime staff do. And when they don’t record it, they don’t pay it.”
In the games industry, there have been much-reported accusations of ‘crunch’. Ukie’s most recent Census revealed that while 80% of respondents said that their average week was 40 hours or less, 67% of people had worked 40 hours in their ‘heaviest’ week.
The most common duration of a heaviest work week was 41-50 hours, but 18% had worked a 51-60 hour week, 11% had worked at least one week of 60 hours or more, and 5% had worked over 70 hours in one week.
