The Trades Union Congress (TUC) wants workers to down tools when the clock strikes home time on Friday (25 February) to show the benefits of unpaid overtime.The TUC is encouraging workers to take part in ‘Work Your Proper Hours Day’ after estimating that over 5m people in the UK regularly do unpaid overtime. As a result, employers get £23bn worth of free work from staff each year.

Recruitment firm Hot Group has revealed some telling results from an online survey on working hours.

Two-fifths of respondents to the survey didn’t know the details of the EU Working Time Directive, which states that employees should work no more than an average of 48 hours a week over a 17-week period.

Chris Herrmannsen (pictured), managing director of Hot Group’s recruitment consultancy division, doesn’t believe that employers should take all the blame for exploiting their staff. “These results suggest that UK employees are less concerned about the hours they work than our European counterparts,” he said. “It’s a part of our work culture that effort and reward are closely linked.”

Around 15% of people said they worked overtime because they loved their job in a TUC survey in 2003.