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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Working for Free

by New Worker correspondent

Last week we reported on just how deeply embedded the phenomena of zero hours contracts have become in Britain. This week we look at another form of exploitation which in some respects is the opposite of zero hours contracts: Unpaid overtime. This is the subject of a new Trades Union Congress report that demonstrated that in the course of 2023 no less than 26 billion pounds-worth of free labour was gifted to Britain’s bosses by the 3,757,303 workers who carried out unpaid overtime. This tends to affect better paid and permanent workers rather than those in insecure employment. Unpaid overtime is simply not getting paid for hours worked, and is unrelated to the decline in overtime generally which is paid by agreement for unsocial extra hours. In many industries, such as retail, shift work has replaced extra hours.

For over twenty years the TUC has held a “Work Your Proper Hours” day on the last Friday of February. On this occasion “workers are encouraged to take the breaks they are entitled to and finish their shifts on time” as if this is a very special day or some form of heroic protest. The date was originally established to mark the time from the start of the year when workers start to earn more than they have lost, but now if it were to be strictly applied would fall in early March. That shows how effective the TUC’s publicity about the issue has been.

The TUC also politely requests that: “managers are encouraged to support staff by setting reasonable workloads and putting in place workplace policies to protect against burnout” to say nothing of calling on “Ministers to set an example by reducing unpaid overtime in the public sector”. No doubt that message terrified bosses. (More in print edition.)