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Overtime hours could create 30,000 North East jobs

Employees in the North East worked a total of 57 million unpaid hours in 2011 - enough to create up to 30,000 jobs.

This overtime is worth £750 million to the local economy according to the TUC, who compiled the figures.

On average, workers across the North East put in an average on 6.2 hours of paid overtime each week, worth around £4,200 a year per person. If these workers who regularly put in unpaid overtime worked all their hours from the start of the year, the first day they would get paid would be Friday 24 February - which has been named “Work Your Proper Hours Day” by the TUC.

The lighthearted campaign is now in its eighth year celebrating the extra hours that millions of workers put in to help their employers. However, the TUC are keen to emphasise that there is a serious message behind the statistics, in that persistent and excessive hours of unpaid overtime are holding back job creation.

TUC Regional Secretary Kevin Rowan said: “Hundreds of thousands of workers across the North East are giving the economy a huge hidden boost by putting in a million hours of unpaid overtime.

“But while many of the extra unpaid hours worked could easily be reduced by changing work practices and ending the UK’s culture of pointless presenteeism, a small number of employers are exploiting staff by regularly forcing them to do excessive amounts of extra work for no extra pay.”

Mr Rowan is now encouraging employers who’s staff work extremely long hours to take on new employees in a bid to ease pressure and provide much needed jobs/

He added: “This attitude is not only bad for workers’ health, it’s bad for the economy too as it reduces productivity and holds back job creation.

“No-one wants to see us to become a nation of clock-watchers. But a more sensible and grown up attitude to working time could cut out needless unpaid hours and help more people into work.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .