Revision of working time back on the cards

Revision of working time back on the cards
By Jennifer Rankin

24.03.2010 / 19:21 CET

Consultation with unions and employers' groups launched on whether the law needs to be changed.

The fraught issue of working time is back on the EU's agenda, almost a year after talks collapsed.

László Andor, the European commissioner for employment, social affairs and inclusion, announced a consultation with unions and employers' groups on whether the law needs to be changed. In April 2009, five years of work on revising the directive broke down after the European Parliament and national governments failed to reach a compromise.

“The failure to reach an agreement on revising the working time legislation last year does not mean that the problems around the existing rules have gone away,” said Andor. “Today we invite the social partners to come forward with innovative proposals that move beyond the unsuccessful debates of the past.”

Talks failed last year because a group of national governments, led by the UK, refused demands by MEPs to scrap their opt-outs from the directive. These opt-outs allow individuals to waive their right to limit their working week to 48 hours. MEPs and member states also failed to agree on whether time spent on-call by workers such as doctors, nurses and firefighters should count towards the 48-hour limit.

In a number of cases between 2000 and 2003, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the time doctors spent on-call should count towards the 48-hour week.

Unions and employers now have six weeks to give their views to the Commission, which will then decide whether to mount a second attempt at revising the 2003 directive.

Steven D'Haeseleer, director of social affairs at BusinessEurope, the European employers' association, predicted that the 48-hour opt-out and on-call time would “be part of the debate” but said that “it would not be wise to focus again predominantly on those issues”.

“We hope that we can have a really fundamental debate,” he said. “The time is ripe to look for a broader approach, moving away from focusing on the existing directive to look at the level at which working time should be regulated.”

The Commission needed to analyse the “fundamental changes in the workforce” since the first EU working time law was agreed in 1993, D'Haeseleer said. Changes in information technology have created a more mobile workforce with different expectations of work. “The young people that are now coming into the labour market have a different way in which they want to organise work than the average 40-year old,” he said.

But unions contend that there is unfinished business in protecting workers' rights. “Although the world of work has changed, [the] evidence has not changed since the first legislation on working time, nor since we last discussed the revision of the working time directive,” said John Monks, the general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

“Protection of the health and safety of workers must therefore remain the primary goal of any review of the working time directive.”

The ETUC also accuses the Commission of allowing the law to become weaker, by failing to take national governments to court for shortcomings in implementing ECJ rulings on on-call work.

Source: http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2010/03/revision-of-working-time-back-on-the-cards/67530.aspx.

.