Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-07-Speech-4-216"
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"en.20020207.12.4-216"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, I am particularly honoured to present the report on the first five years' implementation of the working time directive. Working times, like wages, have been one of the main subjects of employee claims throughout the history of industrial relations. These claims and success with them are down to the trade union movement, because the arrangements which it has brokered have restored workers' dignity, improved their standard of living, reduced risks to life and limb and, by deregulating working times, given them time for a political and social life.
Despite the fact that health and safety legislation forms the legal basis for the directive, we must not underestimate its other aspects. That is why the Member States must safeguard this
as the cornerstone of social cohesion. At the same time, it is also why I have the right to express my disappointment in a number of states for their unwillingness to transpose the directive into national law on time, despite their self-evident obligation to do so. I should also like to comment on the fact that the Member States have not provided detailed statements of national arrangements which allow the Commission to clearly assess if they are complying with the arrangements set out in the directive. For example, it is totally unclear if and to what extent it applies to all public-sector workers. Implementation so far has given rise to a series of disputes and/or straightforward infringements. One of these issues is the issue of doctors on duty, although this links up with the more general issue of equating readiness to work with working time and, in this sense, it also applies to other categories of workers. The ruling by the Court of Justice, whereby readiness to work requiring the worker to be present in the workplace and to have alert physical and mental faculties qualifies as regular paid working time, is in keeping with the traditional approach under labour legislation.
Another issue is the infringement of the right to leave where there is a limited contract of employment. Here too, the Court of Justice's ruling that the right to leave is a basic right to which even temporary employees on a limited contract of less than one year are entitled will help in the fight against infringements. A third point which deserves the Commission's attention is the woolly definition of maximum working time. It is strange there is still controversy over the exact meaning of a definition which has applied for decades.
The transposition of the directive in certain countries in the form of collective agreements is also a major issue. This is a matter of general interest. Without question this method, which promotes collective autonomy, must be encouraged. However, it must be used in a way which produces the same results as it would if the directive were transposed in a legislative act. This has not been the case in the past, either because sectoral collective agreements have been used, rather than a general cross-sector agreement covering all workers, or because there are no collective agreements which apply to all workers.
Finally, again in connection with arrangements under traditional industrial relations, there is the problem of special arrangements for specific categories of particular types of workers such as women, mothers, persons with disabilities, children etc. Special care must be taken with arrangements for these categories of vulnerable workers and an initiative must be taken to improve them in the light of past experience so that they can be integrated into the European Union's policy of increasing the number of women in work and making it easier for persons with disabilities to access the job market.
I should like to use the last part of my intervention to comment on what is to become of traditional arrangements following the emergence of new forms of work, where the principle of flexibility and traditional job security are being turned into employability. We need courageous innovations here if we are to guarantee the principle announced at Lisbon of combining flexibility with protection and this principle needs to be translated into industrial relations by taking specific measures to organise working times.
If we are to replace traditional job security with employability, we need a new approach to working time arrangements because new problems are emerging, such as how to turn part-time employment into full-time employment, what to do about weekly rests and the ban on working on public holidays, how far to adjust working time arrangements where paid work is turned into self-employment, how to control the application of specific working time arrangements in the case of teleworking, what new balance must be struck between home life and work and, finally of course, how can we make time spent on lifelong learning count as working time.
In closing, I should like to add that the European trades unions rightly want to highlight all these issues relating to modern forms of work as immediate priorities in a widespread campaign which they are planning to start on 14 February to follow on from today's debate."@en1
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