The issue of unpaid overtime is high on the agenda in the healthcare sector, especially the NHS, in light of the recent junior doctor disputes – but how do you go about accounting for doctors’ overtime as a whole?
In recent weeks, disputes from younger NHS workers arose due to the desire to move to a ‘true’ seven-day healthcare service, which in practice means no unsociable pay at weekends.
However, junior doctors, like their counterparts throughout the NHS, frequently work long unpaid overtime hours, leading to claims of double standards when expected to forgo their extra weekend pay.
Figures from the TUC reveal that the public sector in general suffers from a culture of unpaid overtime – accounting for 25.7% of the UK’s employment, but 33.6% of its overtime hours.
Last year alone, this equated to £10.8 billion of unpaid work, with teachers putting in the most as over half of them worked an average of 11.9 hours extra per week.
Within healthcare, 33.7% of managers in health and care services put in some unpaid overtime, with the majority saying they averaged 9.9 hours of unpaid overtime each week.
Among health and social services managers, 56.5% worked unpaid overtime, and more than half of these averaged 8.7 hours per week.
Throughout the north-west as a whole, in all sectors, 16.1% of people work unpaid overtime, averaging 7.9 hours every week.
Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said: “We do not want to turn Britain into a nation of clock watchers. Few people mind putting in extra effort from time to time when it is needed, but it is too easy for extra time to be taken for granted and expected day in day out.”
This of course is the dispute among junior doctors, whose pay and conditions have been eroded in recent years of austerity, but who are still expected to work long hours – with many of those hours for free.
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