Madrid (EFE).- Overtime, both paid and unpaid, grew by 8.06% in 2022, to 6,783,900 weekly hours, thus reaching levels not seen at the end of the year since 2009.
According to the Active Population Survey (EPA), published this Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) with data from the fourth quarter of 2022, last year 3.88 million paid extra hours per week were performed in Spain (a 13.47% more than in 2021) and 2.89 million unpaid (1.56% more).
Thus, 42.7% of the hours carried out to lengthen the working day did not receive financial compensation.
Of the total overtime, 58.4% (3.9 million) were done by workers, while the remaining 41.6% (2.8 million) were done by female workers.
If the total number of employed persons is taken into account, only 5.23% (0.9 million) work overtime, although only slightly more than half of them (51.7%) see it as paid.
A sign of economic recovery
For the director of the Funcas Situation, Raymond Torres, this recovery of overtime in 2022 is part of a context of economic recovery, activity and employment after the impact of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
“It is a normalization within the framework of the recovery process,” he points out to EFE.
It also points out, however, that, after the increase in paid hours, there may be a change in the hiring model with the labor reform, since overtime tends to be recognized and paid more when there is an indefinite labor agreement than a temporary one.
However, for the general deputy secretary of Union Policy of the UGT, Fernando Luján, “companies are using overtime to adjust demand instead of hiring”, which explains, as he has indicated to EFE, that in the last quarter from 2022 the hours worked will increase despite the loss suffered by the job.
Luján, who describes the situation as “abuse” by companies, points out that the increase in overtime “goes against everything: productivity, occupational health, contributions to Social Security and the system ».
Unpaid hours stand out in education
The sectors that registered the most overtime, both paid and unpaid, were the manufacturing industry (940,800 hours), commerce (935,4000) and health activities (926,200).
However, among the unpaid overtime, the first activity is education, with 439,200 overtime hours per week that did not receive any type of remuneration.
In this way, 90.3% of the total overtime in education does not report any remuneration for professionals in the sector.
In addition, in education it is women who do most of the overtime, since they take care of 66.04% of the total.
Overtime “has a tremendous gender and sectoral bias,” the deputy to the CCOO’s Trade Union Action and Employment Secretariat, Raúl Olmos, assures EFE, who points out that these have increased especially among women who carry out scientific and technical activities (which include both education and health and research).
According to data from the EPA, the amount of time worked beyond the ordinary day that does not receive remuneration by technical and scientific and intellectual professionals increased last year by 49.6%.
For the unions, the solution involves a more effective time record and the provision of resources to the Labor Inspectorate, although, in the case of the increase in overtime in education, Olmos points to the growing ratios of students per classroom , which means “more time to prepare the classes”, something that is done outside the center and ordinary hours.
For this reason, for Luján the solution for the excess hours worked in health and education is none other than a “greater hiring” to achieve “a greater distribution of work and greater productivity.”
“They are the people who take care of our children and our health. We should be rigorous in good working conditions for the people who serve us, ”says the UGT deputy secretary.