One in 20 nurses does around £7,000 worth of annual unpaid overtime to keep patients safe, research reveals.
They told an NHS England staff survey they worked at least 11 hours for free every week.
It comes as Royal College of Nursing members at 176 trusts and other NHS organisations are due to strike.
Labour says the health service has become dependent on the goodwill of overworked staff.
Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting reckons the cost of unpaid overtime to the 537,577 nurses, doctors and paramedics in England is more than £1billion a year.
He said: “They are having to go above and beyond because the Conservatives have failed to train enough staff over the past 12 years.
“The Government cannot continue relying on goodwill. Labour will launch the biggest expansion of medical training in history so the NHS has the staff it needs, paid for by abolishing non-dom tax status.”
High dependency nurse Martin Jackson, a GMB union representative at Barnsley Hospital in Yorkshire, said: “We always work through lunch breaks and we are quite often late off at the end of a shift.
“We are understaffed and working loads of unpaid hours. You can get a job in a supermarket for more pay. We’ve had enough.”
Rachel Harrison, GMB National Secretary, added: “The reality is the NHS is propped up by the devotion of overworked health staff who effectively subsidise the Government to the tune of billions of pounds of free labour. And what’s their reward? More than a decade of real-terms pay cuts.”
The 2021 NHS staff survey revealed doctors and dentists put in the most extra hours. Around half said they did up to five unpaid hours a week.
Dr Latifa Patel, of the British Medical Association, said: “The Government should be ashamed. Doctors and other staff feel they must regularly work unpaid overtime to keep patients safe.
“With more than seven million on waiting lists, it is long past time for the Government to act.”
The Department of Health and Social Care said: “We are growing the NHS workforce, with over 31,000 more staff than a year ago. We are also on track with our commitment for 50,000 more nurses by 2024.”
- Almost 10,000 of Unite’s NHS members across 36 trusts and organisations in England and Wales are to be balloted in the coming days over strikes.
