Brussels, 21/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - On 19 April, further to the “adjustment of working hours” saga, the European Parliament's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs approved the amendments to the report by Alejandro Cercas (PES, Spain) on the proposal of directive concerning certain aspects of working hour adjustment. There are two very important amendments, which have given rise to radically different stances between Conservatives and Socialists, between employers and trade unions. These concern the opt-out system and the definition of time spent on-call (hospital doctors, for example). Wednesday's majority vote provides for: - the disappearance of opt-out, 36 months after the directive took effect (or a clause of renunciation which authorises Member States not to apply the maximum 48-hour working time duration per week under certain conditions: prior agreement from the worker, lack of adverse effects for the workers that refuse opt-out and the recording of working hours of persons accepting this renunciation); - time on call, including the time spent not working, will be considered as working time. This vote closely follows the stormy debate at the Committee of the Regions where the stances taken by Conservatives and Socialists differed greatly (EUROPE 8931).
Alejandro Cercas' amended report will now be submitted to the EP plenary session mid-May. It will then be on the table of the EU25 employment and social affairs ministers, who are to meet on 2 and 3 June in Luxembourg to seek a political agreement on this sensitive issue. The dossier will then be forwarded to the British EU Council Presidency.
All this brings the promise of good discussion, especially when one remembers that the British had, in January 2004, negotiated and obtained the possibility of using opt out (EUROPE 8616). Furthermore, the day before the vote in committee, British Conservative Philip Bushill-Matthews had, when speaking to the press, recalled that London is very keen on keeping the individual opt-out on a 48 hour working week (many workers use it). “We believe in the Lisbon Agenda. We want more flexibility, not less”, he added, stressing that a flexible labour market is essential for a country to be competitive on global markets. Nick Goulding (Forum of Private Business) had explained that, if the opt-out were withdrawn, “we would be faced with an impoverished British labour market, with the small enterprises being the first victims”.
The vote on Wednesday nonetheless received an enthusiastic welcome from the left, and disappointment from the Conservatives and employers' world. With the scheduled withdrawal of opt-out, workers will no longer be exposed to excessively long working hours and the labour market will be less flexible, with all the consequences that this entails. On the left, British Green member Jean Lambert said she was very pleased with the result, withdrawal from opt out being one of her priority battles in this dossier. “The directive on adjustment of working hours consists essentially in seeing who controls your life. Opt-out is currently in force in the United Kingdom”, where only one worker out of three knows the existence of a limit to the number of hours worked per week. The Greens/EFA Group is opposed to any excessive working timetable, as this entails negative consequences on worker health as well as on family life, and brings with it a high rate of absenteeism at work, Jean Lambert notes.
On the employers' side, the secretary general of UEAPME (European Union of Craft, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise), Hans-Werner Müller, restated what he had told the press: “Imposing less flexibility when it comes to working hours can but make survival of the smallest enterprises more difficult, and this will be at the cost of great job losses throughout Europe”. “The EP must review today's vote during its May plenary session”, Mr Müller added, also calling once again for the inactive part of on-call time to be considered as time worked, and for opt-out to be kept in the directive. Mario Müller (Eurocommerce) said “flexibility is needed for employers and also for workers and (…) for implementation of the Lisbon goals”.