BOSSES have cashed in £26 billion as the average worker put in the equivalent of £7,200 of unpaid overtime last year, TUC research reveals today.
Public bodies benefited the most from the free labour with 3.8 million people doing unpaid overtime in 2023 and teachers topping the chart for working after hours.
On the 20th Work Your Proper Hours Day, TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “We’re encouraging every worker to take their lunch break and finish on time today.
“Most workers don’t mind putting in extra hours from time to time, but they should be paid for it.
“Part of the problem is that some employers fail to record the overtime staff do. And when they don’t record it, they don’t pay it.”
The analysis found one in six public-sector workers did unpaid overtime in 2023, compared to one in nine in the private sector.
This amounted to staff giving £11 billion worth of unpaid overtime to meet the needs of service users – an average of more than 10 million hours each week.
Chief executives, managers and directors also featured strongly, suggesting poor management of senior staff, the TUC said.
London had the highest proportion of workers doing unpaid overtime, at 18.8 per cent, compared to 13.2 per cent nationally.
Mr Nowak accused the Tories of refusing to tighten the rules on employer records, with public-sector cuts and mismanagement to blame for high unpaid overtime rates, burnout and staff retention crises.
National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede said the government is currently benefiting from 5.5 million unpaid hours from teaching professionals alone, with staff who do overtime averaging an extra 26.3 hours per week.
He said that head teachers would “undoubtedly be the worst affected” and warned would-be teachers were being put off by being “underpaid for excessive hours spent in buildings that are falling apart thanks to a miserly government.”
Mr Kebede called for urgent changes to the current punitive accountability regime, a plan to reduce class sizes, increase planning, preparation and assessment time, and a faster solution to the teacher recruitment and retention crisis.
NASUWT general secretary Dr Patrick Roach said: “The fact that teachers are losing out on average by £15,047 a year in unpaid overtime is nothing less than daylight robbery.”
