Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-13-Speech-3-141"
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"en.20010613.4.3-141"2
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"Mr President, our ongoing work on working time goes back to the 1993 Directive, which excluded approximately six million workers in total, some 5 million of whom were working in the various transport sectors. Last year's overhaul of the directive brought all rail workers, non-mobile workers in the other transport sectors, offshore workers and doctors in training under the directive's scope. Furthermore, separate agreements have been reached in the maritime and aviation sectors.
This proposal on road transport thus seeks to close one of the last remaining gaps, but even so it will not cover all drivers. As it stands, it will only apply to workers covered by Regulation No 3820/85 and will therefore leave out a number of categories of workers, including workers driving vehicles of less than 3.5 tonnes, regular urban transport drivers, taxi drivers and drivers of vehicles carrying no more than nine passengers.
Amendment No 5, from the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, seeks an early revision of the regulation in order to include these workers. Even more serious, however, is the possibility left open in the common position, namely that the self-employed might be permanently excluded from this directive. The original 1993 directive applies to employees, but this proposal has two legal bases: Article 137 covers occupational health and safety, while Article 71 covers operational safety. It therefore applies to the self-employed, and rightly so. We cannot exclude the self-employed. If it is dangerous to a driver's health and safety, and to road safety more generally, for an employed driver to work long hours, is it not just as dangerous for a self-employed worker? The answer to that, of course, is that it must be.
When a lorry fills your rear-view mirror, are you going to wonder whether that driver is employed and rested, or self-employed and potentially tired and dangerous? So inclusion of all drivers is important, both on occupational health and safety grounds and on operational safety grounds.
But there is also a third important element: that of ensuring fair competition between the various modes of transport. The rail sector is currently covered by the 1993 directive, but road is not covered by anything approaching a similar regime. If we are serious about promoting a transfer of freight traffic from road to rail, with all of the environmental benefits that this can bring, then this too is a very important consideration.
My proposed compromise on this point is the same as the Commission's revised opinion following our first reading. In Amendment No 4, I propose an extra three-year transition for the self-employed, and then their automatic inclusion. However, even this poses difficulties. Even a temporary exclusion might open up the possibility of imaginative new forms of false self-employment and of collective arrangements being dismantled by unscrupulous employers. That is why the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs has also proposed a tighter definition of what a self-employed driver actually is in Amendment No 10. Those not meeting the criteria listed therein would be subject to the same rights and obligations under the directive as employees.
These are some of the important points in the proposal, but others include the definitions of working time and stand-by duty. The common position is so vague on these issues that there is little point in trying to limit working time on that basis. We have, therefore, proposed a return to the definition in the Commission's revised opinion in Amendment No 6. In Amendment No 15 we propose that the reference period for calculating the average 48-hour week be limited to arrangements set in place as a result of collective agreements. I proposed to the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs that a driver should receive prior notice of commencement of a period of availability 24 hours in advance. That did not get the support I would have liked in committee, and I would therefore recommend to the House that the compromise proposed by Mrs Lynne in Amendment No 24 of 12 hours' prior notice should be supported.
In Amendment No 14 I propose that night work be limited to 8 hours with a possible temporary extension to 10 hours, so long as the 8-hour average is achieved over a reference period to be agreed after consultation with the social partners. The human being is not a nocturnal animal and research demonstrates that the risks of accidents to health and safety are highest as a result of night work. Therefore, that is also an important point.
In conclusion, the key element is that of the inclusion of the self-employed. I hope transport ministers will be persuaded to agree to it, otherwise this whole package might be rejected. They would be to blame if that were to occur, and I hope we can work together to make sure that we put this piece of the jigsaw puzzle in place as soon as possible."@en1
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