WORKERS in the West Midlands gave their employers £2.2 billion of free labour in 2017 by doing unpaid overtime, according to new analysis of official statistics by the TUC.
Today is the TUC’s 14th annual Work Your Proper Hours Day. Prior to this day, the average person doing unpaid overtime has effectively worked the year so far for free.
In all 364,995 people in the West Midlands put in an average of 7.8 hours a week in unpaid overtime during 2017. This averages £6,074 a year that each of those workers is losing out in pay.
To mark the day, the TUC is asking workers to take a proper lunch break and leave on time and it says managers should consider how to move away from over-reliance on unpaid overtime.
Workers can check how much more they’d get each year if their overtime was paid at their usual rate at http://act.goingtowork.org.uk/page/content/unpaid-overtime.
