24 February 2006
Public sector staff worked £9.1bn worth of unpaid overtime last year, with those taking on additional work providing the equivalent of an extra day each week, according to research published this week.
But public bodies denied that the increasingly high-pressure sector had been 'bailed out' by staff goodwill.
The Trades Union Congress published figures on February 24 indicating that 1.7 million public servants work unpaid overtime, with teachers, health and social care staff most likely to work beyond their required hours.
Paul Sellers, the TUC policy officer who compiled the figures, told Public Finance that the public sector's reliance on unpaid overtime was 'excessive'. He claimed the numbers forced to work longer hours had risen by 50,000 since 2001.
However, Sellers added that the figures had 'most likely peaked', and that the proportion of staff undertaking unpaid overtime had fallen from 26.3% in 2001 to 24.7% in 2005.
Sellers said: 'The public sector has expanded but unpaid overtime has not increased at the same rate.' He added that the TUC 'was not trying to eradicate unpaid overtime,' but 'stood firmly against excessive reliance upon it'.
The TUC based its calculations on salary research by the government's Office for National Statistics and Microdata, which produces the quarterly Labour Force Survey.
It shows that public sector staff are likely to do more overtime than their private sector counterparts – 7.7 hours per week compared to 7.2 hours. Across the public sector, women are almost twice as likely to do unpaid overtime as men (65%, compared with 35%).
Teachers are most likely to have to work extra hours – around 609,000 education staff needed to last year. Childcare and personal services workers (102,000), health associated professionals such as doctors and nurses (131,000) and health and social services managers (63,000) also feature prominently.
Click here for a full breakdown of public sector unpaid overtime (this will open up a new browser window)
But a spokeswoman for the Department for Education and Skills said the findings 'did not paint a picture of an over-stressed, over-worked and over-tired [teaching] workforce'.
'The TUC's findings indicate that the situation is improving and that is something we have contributed to in our efforts to improve productivity while retaining a focus on high standards,' she added.
A Department of Health source said that the situation across its workforce would be 'gradually improved by continued efforts to reduce the average number of hours worked by junior doctors'.
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