Journalists can give as much as six and half years of free labour in unpaid overtime throughout their working life, according to the National Union of Journalists.

The union also compares journalism with other professional careers to calculate that journalists may be losing out by more than £150,000 on average compared with their graduate colleagues in other walks of life, such as teaching, accountancy or the law.

The union believes that on average staff give two months of their own time a year beyond what they are paid for – working late or through their lunch hour and covering events in the evening and at weekends.

As part of the union’s campaigning to address the situation and ensure journalists are “properly rewarded” for the work they do, the NUJ is holding a Pay in the Media Summit, where the issues will be discussed and union activists will form strategies for negotiating better treatment. The summit takes place at the NUJ’s head office in London on Saturday November 19.

The campaign has already seen some success, with officials taking the credit for securing a 25 per cent increase in trainee starting rates in the four largest regional newspaper publishers in the country.

The TUC will be holding a Work Your Proper Hours Day on February 24 next year – the date when the TUC estimates that people who do unpaid overtime will stop working for free in 2006 and start to get paid.