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BRITISH workers gave their bosses nearly £32 bllion in unpaid overtime last year — an average of more than £6,000 each.
The staggering sum is revealed in analysis published by the TUC today to mark Work Your Proper Hours Day.
Today is the point this year when the average person doing unpaid overtime would start getting paid if they worked all their unpaid hours at the start of the year — equivalent to 12 weeks’ full-time work.
To mark the day the TUC is calling on workers to take a proper lunch break and leave on time.
The analysis shows that more than five million people work an average of 7.7 unpaid hours a week.
The most “free” hours per worker are in education (9.7 per week), hospitality industry (9.3), mining and quarrying (9.2), finance (8.7) and scientific and technical (8.4).
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Staff across Britain are continuing to work among the longest hours in Europe and are not even paid for much of the extra time they put in.
“Millions of workers go the extra mile every week, boosting the profits of companies across the country while they lose out on thousands of pounds from their pay packets. And this is on top of the fact that one in five jobs already pays under the living wage.”
The study showed that in the worst-affected sector, education, 37.6 per cent of employees work unpaid overtime of 9.7 hours a week.
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: “These figures reveal how staff in our schools, colleges and universities are going that extra unpaid mile. Not only are people working in education putting in the most unpaid overtime, they are also more likely than any other industry to be doing unpaid work.”
Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: “Yet again teachers are at the top of the list for unpaid hours worked. This situation is untenable.
“Much of teachers’ excessive workload is as a result of government education policies and initiatives, including the totally out-of-control accountability systems.”
