And the hours are often longer off the books, since things like cleanup are sometimes not counted as worked hours.

I think restaurants pull that crap in the US too, by not scheduling enough on the clock hours for cleanup after the store closes. It's why you'll see places lock the doors even 30 min or more before the listed closing time.

When I was young I worked at Dunkin’ Donuts. You’re right that we had 30 mins of cleaning after the store closed. We were paid for it and were never asked to clock out and work for free.

But, sometimes on Friday nights we’d lock the doors 30 minutes early and clean just so we could get to enjoy our weekends 30 minutes sooner.

That was pretty rare unless a manager happened to be there that evening and also wanted to go enjoy their weekend.

I honestly can’t think of anyone I worked with there that would’ve clocked out and worked for free. I think people would’ve quit quickly. There were like 5 other Dunkin franchisees in the county and they’d all hire you on the spot if you’d done the job before.

I worked a few fast food and restaurant jobs 10+ years ago and we were auto clocked out at closing, but were still required to clean up. I never did and I got let go 2 times for not working for free.

Probably depends on how competitive the market is for workers. When I was trying to get a minimum wage job, it took a while to get. Now it's probably relatively easily. In today's market, they wouldn't try that because those people would go to a place that wouldn't do that and implicitly pays more as a result.