Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-09-Speech-1-065"
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"en.20040209.5.1-065"2
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"Mr President, I wish to begin by congratulating the Commissioner and thanking her for her wise, practical and helpful comments today and also for the report by the Commission, which was extremely well balanced. I mean no disrespect to the rapporteur, and I hope he will forgive me for saying that I cannot make the same comments about his own report. As he knows, together with the ELDR Group, we nearly managed to defeat it in committee, but virtually none of our amendments were accepted. Yet they so nearly won through and, had we succeeded, we would not have had to trouble the House on this occasion. Needless to say, we are retabling those amendments and we hope that the full House will do justice to them in the vote on Wednesday.
In conclusion, I know that on the record in September UK Labour MEPs said that they voted unanimously against retaining the opt-out, but it is never too late to repent. I still cherish the hope that on Wednesday they will vote with us in the interests both of employment and employees.
The sad thing about the report was that essentially it stated in black and white that there should be no opt-out at all under any circumstances and that the UK should be taken to court for alleged abuses, as if to say: my mind is made up, do not confuse me with the facts.
I would like to share some facts with the House this evening. Opting out from the working time directive is voluntary: nobody can legally be forced to sign an opt-out and it is important to give people the flexibility to work longer hours and earn the overtime if they wish. Research in the UK has indicated that 2.5 million people work longer than the maximum hours stated in the directive, but two thirds of them get paid for the extra hours so would lose out if the opt-out were removed. It is true that some workers would like to work fewer hours, but not if the cut in hours means a drop in pay. More than seven out of ten of those working longer hours said they would not want fewer hours if it meant less pay. There is
that health and safety have been compromised in any of these circumstances.
I would now just like to talk briefly about the report by Barnard, Deakin and Hobbs, which the rapporteur referred to. He stated that, according to its conclusions, there have been abuses on a massive scale. I have to say that the conclusions say nothing of the kind. It was interesting that, when the Commission report itself came out, there was an article in the
on Tuesday, 6 January, co-authored by Catherine Barnard and Simon Deakin, professing surprise at the way their report had been misinterpreted.
I would just like to quote three short paragraphs. 'It is true that we did uncover evidence of some abuses of the opt-out system. Sometimes, the opt-out was presented as a standard contract term to new staff, which they would have to take positive steps to avoid. But this was unusual. What was striking was that, for every employee who felt under pressure to opt out, we found others who wanted the right to choose what hours they worked and what salary, status and job satisfaction they gained as a result (...). We quickly discovered a gap between the rhetoric around reducing working hours and the reality of working life for many people. In one example given to us, workers in the tobacco industry could lose hundreds of pounds a week in overtime pay if they were limited to working 48 hours.'
They state in the final paragraph that 'a complete ban on long hours would be unfeasible in many companies and industries or would be simply disregarded.'
Those are the facts, not as presented by the rapporteur.
Therefore the conclusion has to be that the opt-out must stay and abuses, if any, must go. I would hope that Members on all sides of the House could support that.
Finally, I would just mention the SIMAP and Jaeger judgments. They are the important issues we should be addressing and our amendments try to focus on those issues, because we have to try to resolve the very clear problems that the Court of Justice has raised."@en1
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