West Midlanders’ unpaid overtime work totals £2bn

New figures released by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) have uncovered that workers in the West Midlands amassed a total of over £2 billion of unpaid overtime in 2014.

Performing an analysis on official figures, the TUC went on to find that 380,000 workers within the West Midland’s region did unpaid overtime, giving an overall average loss of pay of £5,846 per worker.

When looked at further, the TUC analysis throws light on how the education sector is a major hotspot for unpaid work, with the longest average individual unpaid hours totaling at 9.7 hours a week. This is closely followed by employees in the hospitality industry who individually rack up an average of 9.3 hours of unpaid work a week.

The analysis also showed that unpaid overtime is more common in the public sector with 27.4 percent of employees shown to have worked unpaid hours. This is in contrast to the 18.5 percent of employees in the private sector.

These new figures come to light in a time when boards such as the TUC are placing a large focus on unfair treatment or payment of employees. As a response to this, the TUC plan to mark the yearly “Work your Proper Hours Day” by calling on staff to take a proper lunch break and leave work on time, all in a bid to bring equal measures to the workplace.

Commenting on this stark discovery, TUC Midlands Regional Secretary Lee Barron has said: “Staff don’t mind doing a few additional hours during busy periods, but too many employers take this goodwill for granted and forget to thank their staff.

“Further problems arise when those occasional extra hours become the norm, and staff become over-worked and under-paid.”

Whilst the West Midlands highlights problems within the local area, the trend established by the TUC can also be seen all around the UK with locations like London and the South East rating highly in number of unpaid hours worked.

Kendal Barrett, a first year studying Biochemistry, who also works part time at Pets At Home, commented on the new figures: “While obviously these figures are staggering at first glance, it must be said that it is so easy to work overtime: in busy periods at my job I frequently work over in order to help out other colleagues.

“While not necessarily beneficial to you, it’s just one of those things you do to help out those around you. However, with that said these findings cannot be ignored and for the sake of employees around the country some sort of investigation should be launched.”