UK workers clock up £23bn of unpaid overtime

UK employees each work an average of more than seven hours unpaid overtime per week - which would be worth a total of £23bn if workers were paid for it, according to statistics from the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

The average is down slightly on last year but still comes in at seven hours and six minutes extra work per week, which amounts to £4,800 of lost overtime pay for each worker over the year.

The TUC claims that if everyone who does unpaid overtime did all their unpaid work at the start of the year, the first day they would be paid would be 23 February.

The longest hours are worked in the North East where employees each clock up an average of seven hours and 42 minutes unpaid overtime per week. Scottish workers do almost an hour less of extra work per week at six hours, 30 minutes. The London region has the biggest total for the value of the unpaid extra hours at £5bn.

The IT sector is among the worst for a long-hours culture and the TUC's league table of unpaid overtime from last year found that IT managers average more than nine hours per week extra, which adds up to £10,245 in annual overtime pay, while IT professionals clocked an average of more than six hours unpaid extra work per week, equivalent to £5,104 per year.

That contrasts sharply with the earnings of bosses. silicon.com's annual Skills Survey in 2006 showed that almost half of CIOs and IT directors earn more than £70,000 per year, with a fifth taking home more than £110,000.

The TUC claims that if everyone who does unpaid overtime did all their unpaid work at the start of the year, the first day they would be paid would be 23 February.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said in a statement: "We work the longest hours in Europe, and too many workplaces are gripped by a long hours culture. We do not want to turn Britain into a nation of clock-watchers, and few mind putting in extra effort from time to time when it is needed, but it is too easy for extra time to get taken for granted and then expected every week."

The figures in the TUC study are taken from the Labour Force Survey Summer 2006 and the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings by the Office for National Statistics.