Something for nothing | Staff worked £27bn worth of unpaid overtime last year

UK employers gained unpaid overtime from their staff worth a whopping £27billion last year, according to new research from the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

The TUC found that 3.8million people worked overtime in 2021, putting in an average of 7.6 unpaid hours – or a full day – per week. That works out at £7,100 a year of unpaid work, according to UK average rates of pay.

Last year was an unusual working year in many respects, with many workers furloughed and a strong trend towards remote and hybrid working. However, far from offering workers more flexibility and freedom, it seems that the blurring of the boundaries between work and personal life created by remote working has in fact led to workers putting in more hours. The BBC reported that overwork figures rose sharply across the entire globe in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

“For many workers, keeping switched on beyond closing time has become the expectation rather than an exception,” Alex Christian wrote in an article for the BBC. “But it’s rarely explicitly spelled out verbally, let alone in writing. Rather, it’s a tacit understanding between employer and employee: forget contracted hours, you can only log off once you’re done for the day.”