Working the hours you are paid for or unpaid overtime?

My experience was that the people who hadn't taken and/or passed exams were often 'better' than those that had.

Accountancy was one of the professions affected when the polytechnics rebranded themselves as "new" universities and began offering degrees in subjects not offered by the traditional universities. Degrees in accountancy, library and information science, education and so on. Before that people had taken the internal exams of the associations in librarianship or accountancy or they went to teacher training college. So in the late 1970s/early 1980s these experienced and qualified (but sometimes older) staff were dispreferred by short sighted employers in favour of the new graduates.

I can recall applying for a position I was well qualified for but losing out to a graduate who had a 2/2 degree in a completely different subject. A colleage told me that he had "a bit of paper that I didnt have." I told the colleague that I was thinking of going to uni to get my own bit of paper. However if I was going to make that sacrifice I wanted a 2/1. He shook his head and said "Nah, you can get a first." Back in the 1980s a first still meant something and only 10% of graduates got one.

My colleague left and rose to the very top of his profession as librarian of a very well known organization in London and was my referee for my university application.

Never had a job where the hours worked were the hours paid. Civil service - setting up Giro Bank - Local government housing officer, - School secretary (egregious use of keeping hours low to keep us out of the pension scheme), Housing international charity (you guessed, charities assume the lowly are working for free... ) At least now women can speak up!!!

When I first started teaching (early 70s) two of the staff and the head never arrived at school until ten minutes before the bell. The 2 staff (married with families) left at lunch time to do various household things and finished usually about 20 mins after the children left. They stayed for one staff meeting (only 1 hour) once a week and one parents meeting a year.Occasionally they took some work home with them. The children still seemed to learn.

When I finished teaching 15 years ago all the staff were in school before 8am and few left before 5pm. sometimes 6pm Lunch breaks were worked through. Staff meetings were endless and we had additional ones for various reasons. Planning and marking were done at home at weekends. Parents meetings were very long and usually took a couple of evenings We also took children on residential courses, organised concerts and plays, and visits. We attended endless meetings about special needs, SATs, curriculum innovations and other stuff. We were expected to keep up our training and attend courses. The work seemed to expand.
I never knew how many hours we were supposed to work, but it was too many and loads of good teachers simply burned out. They still do.

Casdon

I’m ex NHS too. The NHS only functions because of staff goodwill, extra hours are the unwritten contractual requirement we all signed up to. I do look back now and realise how much it sapped my energy, it took me a good year after I retired to realise how tired I had been.

I agree Casdon the NHS takes advantage of the duty of care staff feel towards their patients. My daughter regularly works more than five hours per week extra to catch up with paperwork and that's a good week.

When I was an Office Manager I often worked late if something needed finishing. I have never been a clock watcher and I think it works both ways, sometimes I would tell my line manager that I was going to come in late the next day because I had stayed late the day before.

As a teacher, all my working life involved working unpaid hours. Marking, preparation; after school events; residentials … I could go on and on. For teachers there is no ‘clocking off’ time - when the pupils go home at the end of their school day, the teacher starts another lot of work.

Most of my working life I would work late for no extra - always more to do and I did enjoy it. That included 5 years in a local authority, the rest private. The only exception was a year on a software project which had been costed to the client on a time & materials basis. The project manager used to insist we down-tools at 5ish, despite protests of 'I just need to finish this bit first'. It was a fantastic year, I have very good memories of the after-work social life!

When I worked in early years I spent a lot of my ‘own time’ preparing and researching. I felt that I benefitted because I enjoyed my working day more, and also from the fact that the children and families had a better experience. I wouldn’t say it was ‘expected’, it was just what everybody did.
The private sector was entirely different, in that my reward there was purely financial, and I was expected to stay/ arrive early if necessary ! Our rota system meant that there were days when there was an extra manager on duty, and our CEO was very good at saying he must owe us time, so would tell us to go home.

As a teacher, I work unpaid overtime. Even the contracted hours which cover things like staff meetings etc. don’t cover the time spent on marking, record keeping and preparation.
DH worked in the private sector and his contract had the sneaky clause and any other hours necessary to perform your duties.

As a teacher, there is no such thing officially as overtime, and when it in reality became too much for me and especially because my work-load was endangering my marriage, I took early retirement.

While studying and doing temping or other office or canteen jobs, I left at the end of the working day, unless overtime at time and a half was being paid.

But then I have always belong to a union, which I gather a lot of gransnetters don't.

I worked as a learning support assistant in a school for a number of years before I retired. For most of the time we had time at the end of the day when we could check our email and do any small tasks we needed to, but in the last year or so the staffing structure changed. Two members of staff had worked an extra hour each day and they carried out numerous tasks after the rest of us left. One of them left to go to another job and the other requested her hours be reduced as she didn't want to stay without her colleague. Only one member of staff was replaced but she was given different duties, so all the jobs that had previously been done were shared out between the rest of the staff. This meant that the 15 minutes at the end of the day was taken up with these tasks on a rota. Unless I had a lesson supporting in IT where I had an opportunity to check my email, I was expected to do it in my own time. As we weren't particularly highly paid I refused. I had a conversation about it with one of the supervisors when I pointed out I hadn't had chance to check my email for a few days. She said "But there may be something important." My response was that if there was something I needed to know I should be given the time to read it or it should be told to me directly. At the same time a new system of 'clocking in' was introduced and I was reprimanded for being 1 minute late 2 days running! This was on top of our contracts saying that 30 minutes a day were deducted from our overall hours for our lunch break, when the lunch break was only 25 minutes long! So at that point they lost all my good will. I was due to retire in about 8 months so I drew a chart of all my working days and coloured it in every day! In the end lockdown came and I worked from home until when I'd intended to retire. I carried on after the date in the end as I didn't want to retire from lockdown so I did an extra half term and got a proper send off! I think things have improved since I left as the school's hours have changed and they now have a longer lunch break as well as more staff. Unfortunately schools are so short of resourses they sometimes take advantage. I've always happily put in extra time when it was appreciated and my choice, but not when it was simply expected.

Worked at big building society for six months (I couldn’t take it any longer) basically data input, the theory was if you finish your job allocation before your going home time you could go, however in reality you had to help other staff to finish their work before you went, making it that you did more work than colleagues for the same amount of pay, so with that and having to get your manager to log you in and out of the systems and having to ask to go to the loo, it has to be the worst job I ever had moral wise

Known as Quiet Quitting.

You work the hours you are paid for, no unpaid overtime is done, no extra curricular activities ( taking work home, organising birthday cards at the office).

You do your own work, you don’t help other colleagues out.

I’d like to see that work in a private sector job.

I was working part time for a short while, I had just arrived at the office when I was asked to help a colleague who wasn’t feeling too good.
I spent most of the morning doing his work whilst he nursed his hangover, I never did it again.

When I was teaching I took a fair amount of work home with me including holiday time doing annual reports.

I put in a lot of extra hours and effort when I was younger. I wanted to be the best and thought this was how I would achieve it. Im Retired now but if I went back to working I would simply do the work I’m paid for and no more. Quiet quitting I think it’s called. You don’t get the appreciation going above and Beto d.

Yes, private sector, PA to director working from his home.
Not only to job done, but also being available on the phone 24/7. Every time my phone rang you could scrape me off the ceiling incase he was calling with a problem. In the end, my mental health was so shot I had to take early retirement.

36 years of teaching , no bonuses or paid overtime it time off in lieu plus after schoolmatches, practices, marking, preparation etc etc ! Not moaning, loved it all but don’t miss it now aged 73 !!

Mollygo

As a teacher, I work unpaid overtime. Even the contracted hours which cover things like staff meetings etc. don’t cover the time spent on marking, record keeping and preparation.
DH worked in the private sector and his contract had the sneaky clause ^and any other hours necessary to perform your duties.^

And don’t forget the other sneaky clause regarding your duties ‘ And any other duties deemed necessary by management’!

When in the Civil Service I routinely worked many hours over the contracted amount and this was necessary to write annual reports, read new instructions and more importantly to check the work of others which otherwise would leave people without the correct amount of money or no money at all. I later got a job in a private industry and it was the easiest job ever! Could not believe it, set hours, hardly any 'difficult' customers, no hassle or changing rules, uniform to wear and OK pay. Very difficult to understand why staff still complained about the problems of the job, thought I should have made the change years ago.

My DD is a freelance proof editor. The rate for each job is offered/agreed at the outset. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know in advance the scale of the work required. As a result, being conscientious, she often works far more hours than she’s paid for. Occasionally, the publisher recognises the amount of effort that has been put in, and pay more, but generally not.

I'm NHS...in chilrens community services....I try to never work over
My hours ...if I ready have to ( eg safeguarding) then I always take the hours back as toil....I'm happy to swap my day off for service need ...but only if it suits me....I'm 59 and retired and returned so at the end of my working life...not sure if that makes a difference....I did my MSc in works time and funded by work .....any research I need to do ( to ensure up to date evidenced practice) I do in works time ....if you start doing stuff in your own time then you aren't doing yourself or your colleagues any favours

As a nurse for 49 years I ve often worked longer than I should have, a scrub nurse won ‘t just leave the operating table at a crucial moment and say I m off home, a midwife won’t leave the patient they ve been looking after all day just at the moment they re about to deliver, these are just a couple of instances I can give as examples. I certainly never got paid for taking my baby/toddler back into the hospital to finish off paperwork I hadn’t had time to do whilst on shift 🤷‍♀️

A lot of professionals here!

I think with teachers and nurses they obviously work more than their contracted hours, but you sort of know it comes with the job and their salaries and holidays used (I know not anymore) to reflect this- including good pensions.

What I think is happening now is that people in poorly paid and often considered 'unskilled' jobs are also expected to work more for no benefit except for the profits for the company they work (slave) for.

So many people working two or even three jobs now just to make ends meet- and have never heard of unions.

People's ignorance of their bargaining power in the workplace astonishes me, but when you are easily replaced by some other desperate sucker it is either work here or go.

I worked in local government. Regularly wirked until 8 pm when the computer system was shut down for backup. Again, two or three ights a week I had to transfer wirk to my home computer and often worked to 1 am finishing work off and then sending to work system for the next day. No overtime paid.