In the modern workplace, tasks could no longer be neatly delineated like on the factory floor ambiguity over when work was ‘finished’ gave rise to unpaid overtime. The number of jobs measured by tangible output shrank. But by the mid-20th Century, office culture boomed, swelling ranks of salaried, middle-class professionals. In industrial times, employees had weekly fixed hours working beyond closing time meant reimbursement. Rather, it’s a tacit understanding between employer and employee: forget contracted hours, you can only log off once you’re done for the day.īut how did it get this way – and what happens next?Ĭovid-19 may have exacerbated the problem, but unpaid overtime has been part of many jobs for decades. But it’s rarely explicitly spelled out verbally, let alone in writing. Zoom meetings run into the early hours.įor many workers, keeping switched on beyond closing time has become the expectation rather than an exception. Workers can attribute the uptick in overtime to a loss of work-life boundaries as commutes, offices and lunch breaks have disappeared for many knowledge workers, so too has the hard line between signing on and off.
The average global workday has lengthened by nearly two hours, and research has shown that most UK employers acknowledge staff work additional, unpaid hours every day. Remote working has intensified the problem. Across the world, overwork figures have sharply risen in the wake of Covid-19 – with free hours more than doubling in North America, particularly. On average, workers are posting 9.2 hours of unpaid overtime every week. Now, according to global figures from the ADP Research Institute, one in 10 people say they work at least 20 hours a week for free. In the UK, pre-pandemic, more than five million workers averaged an extra 7.6 hours a week, contributing to £35bn in unpaid overtime. “My hours depend on my clients’ needs – I don’t have the option of working fewer.”ĭrawn-out days at the desk quickly rack up.
“Working towards 40 hours a week would be a light week for me,” he says. A conventional working week, however, remains elusive. Further into his career, there are fewer workdays that bleed into the following morning. Now working in Beijing, Erik has moved up the corporate ladder. Very occasionally, I’d have to pull an all-nighter.” “Generally, lawyers don’t get paid overtime. “It’s simply a given in the legal industry,” explains Erik. Monstrous workloads and late nights were non-negotiable. Based in Hong Kong, his employer was as prestigious as it was notorious for running new recruits into the ground. When Erik took his first job as a junior associate at an international law firm, he knew the normal rules of nine-to-five didn’t apply.
0 kommentar(er)
