Employees up and down the country will come to work today at their proper starting time, take a proper lunch break and leave on time as part of the TUC’s first ever ‘Work Your Proper Hours day’. Today has been chosen by the TUC as it is the first day people who do unpaid overtime would get paid if they did all their unpaid overtime at the beginning of the year.

The day has been called as part of the TUC's 'It's about time' campaign aimed at calling a halt to the UK's long hours culture, and giving staff a better work/life balance.

According to official statistics (from which all the figures for this campaign have been taken) five million people regularly do unpaid overtime in the UK, and do an average of 7 hours 24 minutes each week. If they were paid, they would get £23 billion extra in pay or £4,500 extra a year each.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “We are not saying that we should become a nation of clockwatchers. But we do work the longest hours in Europe, and the biggest growth has been among people doing unpaid overtime. In too many workplaces this gets taken for granted, with the loyalty and commitment of staff rarely recognised. So we're saying that just for one day a year staff should work their proper hours, and leave on time - preferably to be bought a coffee or cocktail by their grateful boss.”

All week employees have been using the calculator on the TUC’s world of work website http://www.worksmart.org.uk/ to work out how much their unpaid overtime is worth and the day that they stop working for free and start to get paid.

The TUC has also published an unpaid overtime league table that shows which jobs carry the most unpaid overtime at http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/unpaidovertimeleague.pdf. Top groups include senior civil servants, teachers and health professionals.

The TUC is campaigning against the UK's long hours culture. Other European countries manage to work fewer hours but have higher productivity and standards of living. In particular the TUC wants:

• an end to the UK's individual opt-out of the European limit to an average 48 hour working week. The UK is the only EU member that applies this opt-out to all employees
• better enforcement of the existing working time rules
• the loophole in UK law closed that uniquely allows UK employers to count public holidays against the European minimum entitlement of 4 weeks paid holiday.