Unpaid overtime costs local workers €95m a year

An estimated 13,000 employees in Baix Llobregat and L'Hospitalet work unpaid extra hours each week, leaving them without around €95 million annually in wages and social-security contributions.

Laia Serra · 2 Aug 2026 · 1 min read

Workers in Baix Llobregat and L'Hospitalet de Llobregat miss out on an estimated €95 million a year because of overtime that is not paid, according to a local extrapolation of the latest analysis by CCOO de Catalunya, the regional branch of the Comisiones Obreras trade union.

The estimate puts the number of affected employees at almost 13,000. For workers in the two areas, the figure represents lost pay and social-security contributions linked to hours worked beyond their normal schedules without financial compensation.

La Vanguardia's local reporting applied CCOO's Catalonia-wide estimate that 2.7% of employees regularly carry out unpaid overtime to the labour market in Baix Llobregat and L'Hospitalet.

CCOO puts unpaid overtime at more than 486,000 hours a week in Catalonia

CCOO de Catalunya said businesses across Catalonia save €11.6 million a week by not paying more than 486,000 overtime hours worked by employees on average each week.

Its study, using data from 2019 to 2026, found that about 160,000 people in Catalonia work overtime every week, compared with 108,000 before the pandemic. The union said half receive no financial compensation.

More than 1 million overtime hours, paid and unpaid, are worked in Catalonia each week, according to CCOO.
The union estimates that the total is equivalent to about 26,000 full-time jobs.
CCOO said Catalonia records the second-highest volume of overtime among Spain's autonomous communities, behind Madrid.

"The amount not paid by employers does not go into the pockets of the workers making that effort," said Belén López, general secretary of CCOO de Catalunya.

CCOO described unpaid overtime as a growing problem. The local €95 million estimate covers both income workers would have received and associated social-security contributions.

Reported by Source Text Link, lavanguardia.com, europapress.es, Pol Casaponsa Sarabia, Lucía Rodríguez Ayala, infoLibre, Abril Benítez, Jorge Millán, MANUELA OLMEDO ARAGON, RTVE.es, Lucía Palacios, Paula Solanas Alfaro, La Vanguardia Barcelona.