Expected to work late FT employee, how to approach manager?

I work as a full time employee at a small tech company in Arizona (been here 5 yrs) that has been deemed essential. I do all my work on a computer, in office, and I am frequently on multiple deadlines to release smaller parts of a project to our clients. The projects themselves take years to complete.

My team recently shrunk. People left to go to other competing companies and pursue other industries. We didn’t have enough people on our team to begin with, and now we are severely lacking. Our deadlines were already always being pushed back and our manager is frustrated with this, while not acknowledging that we simply don’t have enough people to deliver on the promises the company makes to clients.

Our manager is aware we feel overwhelmed. We did yearly reviews in January and all mentioned feeling stretched thin. The response was we should just stay late to get things done on time. I do stay late when we are close to handing over a project to a client. But because we are always “behind schedule” if I stayed late every time something was technically behind, I would never go home. That’s what my manager does.

Since January, my team has consistently stayed late every day for 30min-2hrs. We are still behind schedule—that’s just the nature of the projects. There are always new fixes to be found.

I am a full time employee. We don’t have a great HR department and I don’t want to escalate this too much. While I’m open to leaving the company, I don’t want to be let go. My wife and I are planning on moving when things calm down in the country because we are expecting a baby and want to be closer to family. This also complicates things as I would hypothetically only be at a new job for another year as opposed to staying at this one for another year.

I don’t mind staying late if my hours are adjusted and my pay is as well. I am seeking advice on leveraging this “voluntary” overtime (been threatened to do it) towards a written raise or an understanding that I will work my 40hrs, overtime when absolutely needed, and that is it.

Thanks!

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