Working for nothing – 900,000 now do 'extreme overtime'

THE number of people working "extreme" levels of unpaid overtime has soared to almost 900,000 in the past year, despite the growth in "underemployed" staff, research showed yesterday.

Teachers and lawyers were most likely to put in hours of unpaid extra work, with one in five clocking up an extra 17 hours of free work a week, said the TUC.

Its annual survey of working hours showed that the number of people doing more than ten hours of unpaid overtime a week rose by 14,000 last year.

One in four public-sector employees worked unpaid overtime in 2009, worth almost 9 billion a year, compared with one in six in private firms.

Single women were most likely to do unpaid overtime, the research showed.

The TUC estimated that the average person putting in unpaid overtime would only start being paid from today if they did all the unpaid work at the start of the year, although those clocking up over ten hours a week wouldn't start being paid until 26 April.

Last year more than five million workers did an average of seven hours 12 minutes of unpaid overtime a week, worth 27.4 billion, or 5,402 each, the TUC said.

General secretary Brendan Barber said: "One of the features of the recession has been people moving to shorter hours or taking part-time work in order to avoid the dole queue. This has also led to a fall in the number of people putting in extra hours at work.

"There has also been a surprise increase in people doing extreme unpaid overtime, with nearly 900,000 workers giving away 18 hours of free work a week last year."

Sally Hunt, the University and College Union general secretary, said: "It does not come as a surprise that teaching tops the list of people most likely to do unpaid overtime. The government is sorely mistaken if it thinks it can squeeze much more out of the dedicated staff that work in our colleges and universities."