The Trades Union Congress is urging people who work unpaid
overtime to work their proper hours on Friday, 24th February 2006
and it wants British bosses to take their staff out for lunch,
coffee or cocktails, to say thank you for their contributions.
The TUC has campaigned for a “Work Your Proper Hours Day”
before. It claims that UK employees worked unpaid overtime worth
£23 billion in 2004. On average, each employee who worked unpaid
overtime would have earned £4,650 for their unpaid hours if paid at
their normal hourly rate, according to the TUC's analysis. If they
had done all their unpaid overtime at the beginning of 2005, they
would have worked for free until Friday 25th February.
Figures are not yet out for 2005, but the TUC estimates that
24th February is the date on which people who do unpaid
overtime will stop working for free in 2006 and start to get
paid.
The TUC is using the campaign as a light-hearted way to raise
the problem of long hours working in the UK. It hopes that
eventually “Work Your Proper Hours Day” will be celebrated earlier
each year, indicating that people are working smarter, not longer.
This year it was Friday, 25th February.
“Most employees like their job and care about their work, it's
one of the reasons they put in unpaid extra time,” said TUC Head of
Campaigns Nigel Stanley. “This year we will be providing practical
advice on how employers and employees can work smarter to cut their
hours and improve the quality of their work.”
He urged employers to mark the date and make plans to say thanks
to their staff.
