Employers save £27.4bn through unpaid overtime in 2009
By Louisa Chadwick in Reward, Pay and Benefits on Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Official figures by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) have revealed that as employers reduced hours to protect jobs, 5.07 million people regularly worked unpaid overtime in 2009, a decline of 168,000 on the previous year.
Staff undertaking the overtime worked on average seven hours and 12 minutes a week, worth £5,402 a year, an increase of £263 since 2008. Of the 5 million employees who worked unpaid overtime, nearly 18% worked more than 10 hours a week for free.
Workers in Northern Ireland and the East Midlands were the most likely to do more than 10 hours of unpaid overtime, with 23.1% and 21.3% doing so respectively.
The TUC has calculated that if everyone who worked unpaid overtime did it from the start of the year, they would only start getting paid on Friday 26th February. The TUC has declared this day ‘Work Your Proper Hours Day’ and will call on all bosses to thank staff for the extra work they have put in to help employers during the recession.
The TUC General Secretary, Brendan Barber, said ‘Millions of people are still working far too many hours and often they are not even being paid for it. This long-hours culture causes stress and damage to people’s health. Most employers are understandably focused on fighting their way through the recession. But they shouldn’t forget that working cultures such as pointless presenteeism – which keeps people at their desks for no good reason – is not just bad for staff but bad for business too’.
If you are an employee, have you worked unpaid overtime in 2009?
If you are a business, how do you thank your staff for the work they have put in during the recession?
safety posters wrote:
Yes, many companies had undergone had time in 2009. Although we did not have the time to work without any pay. We do have to reduce our salary.