Over 2 Billion Hours Of Unpaid Overtime Reported In The UK

Posted April 5, 2019 by Mary McGinley

The UK’s trade union organization or TUC discovered that employees across Great Britain worked more than £32 billion (nearly USD $42 billion) in unpaid overtime in 2018.

According to an article appearing on the Personnel Today website, this equates to approximately 5 million UK workers performing more than 2 billion hours of work that they weren’t paid. Of those underpaid workers, TUC found that teachers and educational professionals were most likely to work without compensation by working on average an extra 12.1 hours per week.

While most people are happy to work a little overtime without compensation to get the job done on occasion, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said that it’s “not acceptable” for employers to expect employees to work extra hours for free. O’Grady feels that far too many employers are taking advantage. The findings have led to TUC leadership proposing new rights for workers and holding employers who break the current UK working time rules to be held accountable before a tribunal.

“Bosses who do steal people’s time should face consequences,” O’Grady said.

The TUC study found that in the UK men worked just under a billion hours of unpaid overtime while in comparison, women in Britain worked 0.9 billion. Also, one in four public workers was likely to work unpaid overtime while one in six workers in the private sector worked overtime without compensation.