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When Jeff Blanchard leaves the office some Friday nights, the sun has set and his work isn't nearly done. Before Monday morning he knows he's still going to have to put in a pile of hours, all for free. But for this 24-year-old Toronto designer, unpaid overtime isn't something to complain about – it's simply a fact of life.

“Some weeks we get out of here on time, other weeks it's 20 hours on a weekend or you're staying at the office until 10 at night,” he says. “I understand I've got to pay the price and put in some time to make sure I get all the stuff done that I can.”

Many Canadians are putting in free overtime these days, and as many as 90 per cent of Canadian organizations believe that unpaid overtime will be an issue for their organization in the next few years, according to a recent Conference Board of Canada report. Indeed, 12 per cent of Canadians put in extra hours at work for free, a figure the Board arrived at before the recession bottomed out. And while many people can't be happy about having to work more for less, most won't raise the issue at work for fear of being seen as trouble makers, experts say, something that will only create toxic work environments.

“We're pushing [people] to do more in this recession and they just can't take it,” says Linda Duxbury, a professor of organizational health at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University in Ottawa. “Exhausted, grumpy, cranky people with no life are not creative or innovative, and they are certainly not loyal.”

There's no doubt people are being asked to do more with less these days.

“Employers right now are tending to say, ‘Well let me see if I can handle any upsurges in work with overtime rather than hiring,'” says Michael Bloom, vice-president of organizational effectiveness and learning at the Conference Board of Canada.

Given the current economy, however, most people are likely to suffer unpaid overtime silently.

“It's human nature in a recession to be concerned about your job, and there's people who would be more inclined to stay quiet when they're faced with overtime,” Mr. Bloom says.

Corporate Canada has encouraged a culture of “donated time” for more than two decades, says Ms. Duxbury. But the number of organizations now concerned about overtime becoming an issue in the future is a foreshadowing of change on the horizon.

“It does signal this is an issue that's moving from having been not that high a profile issue and is now pretty quickly moving much higher on the radar,” Mr. Bloom says.

One key reason for this change, he says, is the growing number of class-action lawsuits being launched in Canada. Indeed, class-action lawsuits centring on unpaid overtime have been launched in recent years against CIBC, KPMG, Scotiabank and the Canadian National Railway Company.

The Conference Board of Canada report found that 41 per cent of organizations are now taking steps to mitigate the legal risks associated with having employees put in overtime without compensation.

Still, most people don't complain about having to work unpaid overtime, especially at smaller companies. One reason is that they do not know if they are entitled to overtime pay, says Aaron Rousseau, a labour and employment lawyer in Toronto. Another is that they fear being viewed as “a complainer who's not willing to go the extra mile.”

Many people may also feel that it is easier to just do the work than find themselves in a legal battle that can go on for months or even years.

“It can be quite lengthy,” says Trisha Gain, a labour and employment lawyer in Calgary. “It may be that the employer and the employee can work it out amongst themselves,” she adds. If not, they may wind up at a provincial employment standards tribunal. “Usually a panel of people or a neutral chair will look at the case and hear arguments from both sides much like they would in court. That tends to be a faster process, but it still could potentially take months.”

Even if people aren't complaining, however, employers should still be worried about requiring staff to put in unpaid overtime. Not only can it hamper morale and create a disgruntled work force, employees will be reluctant to bring problems to managers' attention for fear it will only mean more work, says Jim Thomson, vice-president of human resource operations at Ceridian Canada, a human-resources consulting company. “It freezes the entire organization,” he says.

Mr. Blanchard has no plans to complain about putting in extra time off the clock. He likes his job, and he's glad to have it.

“As long as I don't have anything really important that I'm missing, it's something that I don't mind doing,” he says.

Others are probably just biding their time until the economy recovers and there are more job options, and only then will employers realize how unhappy their workers have been, Ms. Druxbury says.

“They're just going to walk,” she says. “As soon as they can, they're gone.”