Unpaid overtime remains pervasive in many sectors 

The culture of working overtime differs from country to country in the EU.

Workers doing unpaid overtime remains "pervasive" in the European Union because of pressure put on employees, with the likes of healthcare, construction, education, transport and social workers, particularly vulnerable.

That is according to a report from the Dublin-based EU agency European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, or Eurofound, which found that men, workers aged 25–55, and workers with higher levels of education are more likely to report working overtime.

The culture of working overtime differs from country to country in the EU, the report found.

"In some countries, working overtime is viewed as a normal part of employees’ duties for which they are expected to make themselves available, while in others over time is seen as exceptional, to be authorised only under specific circumstances," Eurofound authors Jorge Cabrita, Catherine Cerf, and David Foden said.

The greater the exposure to working overtime, the greater the risk to employee's mental and physical health, it found.

The Covid-19 pandemic may have exacerbated the situation when it comes to demands on worker time.

Remote working actually added hours to many employees' days, Eurofound added.

With the growth of remote working following the pandemic, the way working hours are recorded is also changing and additional hours often constitute invisible ‘grey overtime’. 

Provisions for the right to disconnect being introduced in some countries will be an important way to address this challenge," the analysis said.

Ireland is one of the few EU countries where employees are not statutorily entitled to a pay premium for overtime, it said. Germany and the Netherlands are the other two of the 27 EU member states, along with the UK.

Data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) Labour Force Survey for the last quarter of 2020 was used for the Eurofound report, which indicated that 14% of the total labour force in Ireland reported working in excess of 45 hours per week.

"This includes those indicating that this was due to overtime, while others mentioned flexible or variable hours or other unspecified reasons."

Ireland along with Austria, Malta, Portugal and the UK are those displaying the greatest average numbers of overtime hours, with those who worked overtime working on average about an additional day per week, it found.