50 Macmillan staff take an hour off for lunch in a stand againstIt was bonanza time for the Cricketers Arms in Temple Cowley on February 22nd – designated Work Your Proper Hours Day – when 50 Macmillan employees trooped in to take a full hour’s lunch break. They were there at the invitation of the joint NUJ/Unite chapel to take a stand against the culture of overtime that means an increasing number of us eat our lunch in front of our computers and fail to pack up and go home when we’ve done our contractual hours.
The TUC estimates that around five million workers in the UK regularly work more hours than they are paid for. Certainly the practice is endemic in both journalism and publishing.
For these five million, February the 22nd is an important date, because – if they packed their full year’s overtime into the beginning of the year, this would be the first day they stopped working for free, and started actually getting paid for their labour.
If the problem is bad at Macmillan, it is certainly no better at Pearson, where concerns that overwork is becoming the norm have been raised by the staff council, which worries that the pressure is telling on quality of work and staff morale.
This is clearly a big issue for publishing workers – not just mums and dads with young families, but everyone who wants to have a life outside of work. The turnout to the Cricketers Arms may have had something to do with the offer of a free lunch – the joint chapel footed the bill – but the interest non-members showed in joining a union and doing something to improve the situation was genuine, and the joint chapel will certainly be strengthened in numbers and determination as a result.
This is the second year running the Macmillan joint chapel has marked Work your Proper Hours Day in this way. It is an idea that other chapels could do well to consider. Money can ve made available from the branch, and discounts can be negotiated from local publicans. AW 2008-03-01
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