Unpaid overtime is on the up in the UK, according to the Trades Union Congress (TUC).
New figures from the Work Your Proper Hour Day report said that a record 5.26 million people – including serviced office space workers – clocked up unpaid overtime last year.
This is the highest amount since records began in 1992.
According to the TUC, one in five full-time workers regularly worked unpaid overtime in the past year – a slight increase of 0.7 percentage points when compared to those regularly working overtime in 2009.
The British economy benefited to the tune of £28.9 billion thanks to the huge amount of office space overtime being put in by dedicated staff.
Public sector workers were more likely to do unpaid overtime than their private sector counterparts and Londoners put in the most extra hours – an average of eight per week.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “While most staff are happy to put in some extra free time to help their company through, forcing staff to endlessly put in too many hours could lead to increased stress levels.”
Recently, The Work Foundation claimed that office space stress is on the rise thanks to rising job security woes.
