Scots currently working 115 million hours of unpaid overtime a year

Analysis of the 2017 Annual Population Survey by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) estimates that, on average, Scots do 7.7 hours of unpaid overtime per week.

If these figures are taken to be representative of the year as a whole, they would imply a total of 115million hours of unpaid overtime in the year.

Labour said the figures revealed structural problems in the economy and effectively cut the wages of working class people in Scotland.

Scottish Labour’s Economy spokesperson Jackie Baillie MSP said: “These figures reveal that we desperately need to rebalance our economy so that it works for people, rather than just people working for the economy.

“This overtime effectively represents a cut to the wages of working people across Scotland. It also reveals how desperately understaffed some of or our key public services are.

“We should be looking to strengthen the working time directive by ending the opt out.

“Instead under the SNP and the Tories, workers are doing more hours on unpaid overtime while the incomes of the richest soar.

“That is not an economy working for the many, it is one rewarding a privileged few.”