British employees work more than 5 weeks for free every year and a Brexit could make it even worse

UK’s professionals are working 26.5 days more than their contracted hours each year without being paid overtime

UK’s professionals are working 26.5 days more than their contracted hours each year without being paid overtime (Cultura/Getty Creative)

British workers are working more than 5 weeks for free per year and Britain voting to leave the EU in June might make things worse.

UK’s professionals are working 26.5 days more than their contracted hours each year without being paid overtime.

This amounts to 8 hours and 16 minutes instead of their contracted 7.5 hours per day according to CV-library, a UK independent job site that conducted a survey of more than 20,000 British workers.

With the average UK salary currently standing at £32,939, this suggests an average British worker should earn an additional £3,352 for free days worked, according to the survey of over 20,000 British workers.

Salaries have declined by nearly 1 per cent from the January to March 2016 compared to October to December 2015.

The numbers are expected to drop even further with the introduction of the living wage and worries over the EU referendum, according to Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library.

Over 14 per cent of full-time employees are already working over 10 hours per day, far exceeding the 48 hours per week limit currently imposed by EU employment laws.

(CV-library)

But there is no guarantee this laws could still protect British workers if the UK was to leave Europe.

“There are so many questions still unanswered regarding the EU referendum, and for UK workers many of these questions are surrounding the current EU employment laws. if we leave the EU and the security blanket of a maximum 48 hour week is removed then UK workers could face even longer working days,” Biggins explained.

The research also uncovered how the number of average hours worked varies across the UK.

Full time employees in Scotland work the most overtime for free at 42 days, 5 hours and 38 minutes, meaning they are underpaid by £5,239, CV-Library said.

They are followed by professionals in the South West of England who are working 23 days and 49 minutes for free and are underpaid by £2,685.

People from the North West do the least overtime hours with “just” 30 extra unpaid days every year. They are underpaid by £3,557.

Waitrose, the supermarket arm of the John Lewis partnership, has stopped overtime pay or higher rates on Sundays for staff hired after February 1 2016. The grocer has denied that the changes were linked to the national living wage which raised hourly pay by 50p from 6.70 per hours to £7.20 an hour on April 1.

Tesco, B&Q, Next and Whitbread are some of the multimillion pound firms who have reduced costs, though none have said the decision was linked to the living wage.