Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-13-Speech-3-149"
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"en.20010613.4.3-149"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, regulated working times mean better protection for workers. There is hardly a sector in which this is more pertinent than the transport sector. I should like to reiterate the objective of this directive. Article 1 states that the purpose of the directive is to provide better protection for the safety and health of drivers, improve road safety and bring about more harmonised conditions of competition. I think that the common position does not do this justice; in fact, it even contains a number of inherent contradictions. Our rapporteur has made proposals which make a sensible contribution to transport policy and environmental policy over and above this.
I should like to raise three points on which we disagree with the Council. The most important point – as already mentioned – is to include self-employed drivers. You are wrong, Mr Bushill-Matthews, to say that self-employed drivers and haulage companies are all opposed to Stephen Hughes’ proposal. A whole series of companies has readily recognised that the competition will be ruinous if self-employed drivers are not included. Allow me to reiterate the consequences: if the one-third of the 3.5 million truck drivers who are self-employed are excluded, we shall see thousands of drivers turned into unwilling, bogus self-employed drivers overnight. I cannot believe that they will agree to this.
The second point on which we disagree is night work: we should remember that most serious accidents on European roads are caused not by technical faults but by overtired drivers, which is why we think that eight hours is long enough at the wheel.
My third point concerns standby duty, i.e. the time during which drivers must be ready to take up work. We think that flexible working times should be in the interest of both sides, i.e. the employer or haulier and the employee, which is why we feel that a day's notice is a sensible solution. However, Mrs Smet, this calls for intelligent logistics. We cannot simply allow the current method, the current practice of shifting stock on to the road at the expense of the truck drivers' standby duty, to continue. We need a reasonable, new, practical solution and I think that is precisely what Stephen Hughes gives us in his report."@en1
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