How working unpaid hours became part of the job
W
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. Based in Hong Kong, his employer was as prestigious as it was notorious for running new recruits into the ground. Monstrous workloads and late nights were non-negotiable.
“It’s simply a given in the legal industry,” explains Erik. “Generally, lawyers don’t get paid overtime. Very occasionally, I’d have to pull an all-nighter.”
Now working in Beijing, Erik has moved up the corporate ladder. Further into his career, there are fewer workdays that bleed into the following morning. A conventional working week, however, remains elusive. “Working towards 40 hours a week would be a light week for me,” he says. “My hours depend on my clients’ needs – I don’t have the option of working fewer.”
Drawn-out days at the desk quickly rack up. In the UK, pre-pandemic, more than five million workers averaged an extra 7.6 hours a week, contributing to £35bn in unpaid overtime. 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. On average, workers are posting 9.2 hours of unpaid overtime every week. Across the world, overwork figures have sharply risen in the wake of Covid-19 – with free hours more than doubling in North America, particularly.
Remote working has intensified the problem. 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. 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. Inboxes fill over breakfast. Deadlines spill into the evenings. Zoom meetings run into the early hours.
For many workers, keeping switched on beyond closing time has become the expectation rather than an exception. But it’s rarely explicitly spelled out verbally, let alone in writing. 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.
But how did it get this way – and what happens next?
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211013-how-working-unpaid-hours-became-part-of-the-job
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It's not just the UK---it's a worldwide thing. In my line of work, there was "compulsory overtime", but at least we got paid for that. There were also classes, papers, inservices, etc., some of which we didn't.
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