What our unpaid overtime is worth
The TUC has calculated just how much the extra hours we put in each week are worth.
We worked a staggering two billion hours of unpaid overtime last year, according to figures by the TUC. And it calculates that adds up to 7.2 hours per person per week, or around £5,300 per person over the course of a year.
Around 5.3 million of us are now putting in some extra unpaid hours, up by over a million since the TUC began compiling records.
Workers in the West Midlands put in the most extra hours a week, working an average of 8.3 hours unpaid overtime. London and Yorkshire and the Humber come in joint second with 8.2 hours apiece.
People in Wales and Scotland work the lowest amount, but still put in an extra 5.9 and 6 hours respectively.
And the West Midlands has also seen the biggest growth in people working extra hours, with 56,000 more workers coming in early or working late.
Here’s how the unpaid overtime breaks down across the UK:
|
Region |
Number of people doing unpaid overtime |
Average number of hours of unpaid overtime per week |
|
South East England |
875,000 |
7 |
|
London |
848,000 |
8.2 |
|
Eastern England |
564,000 |
7.4 |
|
North West |
500,000 |
6.9 |
|
South West |
462,000 |
6.9 |
|
Scotland |
417,000 |
6 |
|
West Midlands |
406,000 |
8.3 |
|
Yorkshire & the Humber |
389,000 |
8.2 |
|
East Midlands |
356,000 |
7.5 |
|
Wales |
193,000 |
5.9 |
|
North East England |
177,000 |
6.2 |
|
Northern Ireland |
66,000 |
7.5 |
The TUC has called for “a small number of employers” to stop exploiting their staff and, more generally, “changing work practices and [an end to] the UK’s culture of pointless presenteeism”.
Recent figures by the Office for National Statistics found that we work more hours than almost all of our European counterparts, with the exceptions of Austria and Greece.
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The number of lawsuits against companies to recuperate delinquent overtime and other owed wages are increasing away. The number of suits has increased almost three fold in the past ten years. [url=http://personalmoneynetwork.com/moneyblog/2012/07/27/unpaid-overtime/]Unpaid overtime violations still on the uptick[/url]. Thus, wage and hour violations suits are often brought under the auspices of the Fair Labor Standard Act and typical claims allege worker reclassification, such as re-classifying an employee as part-time, and unpaid overtime or miscalculated overtime pay, among other ways some employers cheat employees out of money earned.
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but all the premier league players balance things out by getting paid a boat load for what is, for all intents and purposes, a hobby
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Someone at Lovemoney needs to do a little overtime on Saturday. You evening update was supposed to be about: Steer clear of dodgy 'low-risk' investments | Death to over-50s life plans | Sectors where jobs are growing I suspect right subject line, wrong email... I got another copy of the breakfast newsletter; I have no idea what happened to the lunch time one. Not to worry I could win the lottery tonight! :)
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06 August 2012