Unpaid overtime costing million jobs
5th January 2012
The CWU has called on the government and employers to "work
together to create jobs" after a hard-hitting TUC report
revealed how one million new posts could be generated by tackling
the scourge of unpaid overtime.
According to research by the TUC, staff worked a staggering two
billion hours without pay last year worth a record £29.2
billion to the UK economy - roughly equivalent to a million extra
full-time jobs. CWU general secretary Billy Hayes described the
figure as "shocking" and called for urgent action to
reform the long-hours culture in the UK.
Billy said: "With unemployment rising and the
economy teetering on the brink of a new recession, we've got to
make job creation our number one priority.
"But these figures show that UK employers are cynically
using the current situation to force workers into ever-longer hours
- without pay," he added.
The TUC - to which the CWU, along with the UK's seven
million trade unionists are affiliated - is urging all of the
nation's workers to back its Work Your Proper Hours Day on
Friday February 24.
"The CWU fully backs the TUC's February 24 Work Your
Proper Hours Day initiative," Billy continued, "and we
welcome this excellent piece of work that the TUC has carried out
which so starkly exposes the scandal of unpaid overtime."
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "While many
politicians and
financial institutions have spectacularly failed to
do their bit to help the UK economy, millions of hard-working staff
clearly have.
"But a small number of employers are exploiting staff by regularly forcing them to do excessive amounts of extra work for no extra pay and this attitude is not only bad for workers' health, it's bad for the economy too as it reduces productivity and holds back job creation," he added.
For more on Work Your Proper Hours day visit: www.workyourproperhoursday.com
*Workers in London (26.9 per cent) and the South East (25 per
cent) are still the most likely to work unpaid overtime. Workers in
the West Midlands (up 3 per cent) and the North East (up 2.2 per
cent) have experienced the sharpest rise in the likelihood of
working unpaid overtime over the last year, according to the TUC
analysis.
The number of workers doing unpaid overtime has increased by
more than a million since records began in 1992, when 4.2 million
people regularly did unpaid overtime, to 5.3 million people in
2011. The proportion of workers doing unpaid overtime has also
increased slightly, from 19.7 per cent in 1992 to 21.1 per cent in
2011.
If workers who regularly put in unpaid overtime worked all their
hours from the start of the year, the first day they would get paid
would be Friday 24 February. The TUC has named this Work Your
Hour Proper Hours Day (WYPHD) in their honour.
Now in its eighth year, WYPHD is a campaign that celebrates the
unsung - and unpaid - extra hours that millions of workers put in
to help their employers and which gives a huge boost to the UK
economy.
In the run-up to WYPHD 2012 the TUC will publish information and
advice for staff and their bosses to try and cut out these unpaid
hours at work. The TUC will call on employers to mark Work
Yours Proper Hours Day by thanking staff for the extra hours
they're putting in.
The TUC analysis of official figures shows that 5.3 million workers put in an average of 7.2 hours of unpaid overtime per week last year, worth around £5,300 a year per person.
The TUC is concerned that persistent and excessive hours of
unpaid overtime are holding back job creation.
Some employers are forcing staff to work extremely long hours that damage their health, when taking on extra employees would be far more productive and provide much needed jobs.
