Rising unpaid overtime: a critical approach to existing theories

In the last period, especially before the current economic crisis began, the phenomenon of employees working long hours without been paid has been observed. This trend appears to have become stronger in the last 15 years but there is ample evidence that the tendency began before then. While there have been various explanations put forward as to why employees work paid overtime, theoretical justification for working unpaid overtime by neoclassical economics seems to be fragile; deferred compensation theory, human capital theory, signalling, gift economy theory and Pareto Optimality analyses are not sufficient to explain the existence and persistence of unpaid overtime. Finally an analysis based on Political Economy’s principles is proposed; tendencies of surplus value extraction, capitalist restructuring and trade unions may be capable of comprehending this phenomenon