date: November 18 2003 embargo: 00:01 hours Monday November 24 2003

Attention: industrial, social affairs, news desks

Work out your unpaid overtime with new TUC calculator - £4,500 is average salary lost

As part of its campaign against Britain’s long working hours, the TUC is giving everyone at work a chance to work out the value of their unpaid overtime with an online calculator. It is launched today (Monday) as the TUC releases figures showing that people at work in the UK will do £23 billion pounds of unpaid overtime this year.

The average amount done by the more than 5 million workers performing unpaid overtime was 7 hours 24 minutes a week, worth £4,500 a year in extra salary. All the figures are taken from official statistics, and exclude employees who do less than one hour of unpaid overtime a week.

The TUC’s online calculator, at http://www.worksmart.org.uk/overtime_calc.php allows anyone to fill in the hours they are meant to work, the hours they actually work and their pay. It then reports how much they would have earned for their extra hours if they were paid their normal hourly rate, or at time and a half.

More managers than any other group do unpaid overtime (more than 1.5 million), but of the workers who do unpaid overtime, professionals do the most (9 hours 36 minutes a week), worth £9,000 a year.

The figures show that even workers in jobs where paid overtime might be expected are putting in unpaid work above their normal hours. Nationally more than 150,000 craft workers are putting in an average of six hours extra, worth nearly £3,000 a year, and more than 70,000 plant and machine operatives are doing an additional 5 hours 36 minutes on average, worth more than £2,000.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber, said: 'Britons work the longest hours in Europe, and these figures show that much of it is unpaid overtime. We’re not saying we should turn into a nation of clock-watchers, or that no one should put in extra work when there’s an emergency or a rush of orders, but many people are clearly putting in the equivalent of an extra day every week. Our calculator gives everyone the chance to see how they compare with the average.

'There’s much to learn from these figures. Is it any wonder that top jobs are still dominated by men, when managers have to do an extra day’s unpaid work each week? When employers quote dubious figures about the costs of what they call red tape, and everyone else calls basic rights at work, do they remember their staff put in billions of pounds worth unpaid extra work each year? Given that workers in much of the rest of Europe work fewer hours, yet produce and earn more, are there not hard questions to ask about the quality of UK managers?

'We need better rights and enforcement, so that no one can sign away a 48-hour average week, but that’s not the only answer. Most of all we need better managed workplaces and cultural change so that people can get their jobs done in the time available, and are rewarded for working smartly, not for putting in long hours.'

The TUC has launched its online overtime calculator, and published these figures, as part of the ‘It’s about time’ campaign against long hours Britain. The campaign is calling for an end to the individual opt-out from Europe’s 48 hour average week that allows bosses to pressurise staff into signing away their working time rights, promoting knowledge about working time rights and making workplaces more efficient so that such long hours are no longer required.

The TUC is also asking workers to tell their long hours stories either via the workSMART website - www.worksmart.org.uk - or by calling the TUC timeline on 0870 8 500 500, from which information on working time rights is also available.

Detailed figures are available below and at http://www.worksmart.org.uk/itsabouttime/compare.php for occupational groups (such as sales) and http://www.worksmart.org.uk/itsabouttime/compare2.php for all regions.

occupational group	number in group who do unpaid overtime	average hours of unpaid overtime per week 2003	average hourly pay rates	value of unpaid overtime per week	value of unpaid overtime per year	value of unpaid overtime per member of occupational group per year who does unpaid overtime
managers	1,663,597	8.5	£18.06	£255,378,775	£13,279,696,320	£7,982
professional	1,386,578	9.6	£17.52	£233,211,327	£12,126,989,654	£8,736
associate professional	959,411	5.6	£13.49	£72,477,744	£3,768,842,718	£3,928
clerical	500,709	4.2	£8.01	£16,844,852	£875,932,313	£1,749
craft	166,654	6.0	£9.01	£9,009,315	£468,484,392	£2,811
personal and protective	230,003	4.0	£8.25	£7,590,099	£394,685,148	£1,716
sales	147,899	4.2	£8.59	£5,335,900	£277,466,806	£1,876
plant and machine operatives	70,757	5.6	£7.82	£3,098,590	£161,126,708	£2,277
others	91,662	4.5	£6.79	£2,800,732	£145,638,085	£1,588
all	5,217,270	7.4	£11.68	£450,939,080	£23,448,832,190	£4,494

Notes to Editors: -

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Contacts: Media enquiries: Ben Hurley 020 7467 1248 or 07626 317903 (pager) or email bhurley@tuc.org.uk or Liz Chinchen 020 7467 1248 or 07699 744115 (pager) or email media@tuc.org.uk

Press release (900 words) issued 24 Nov 2003