Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-11-Speech-3-114"
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"en.20040211.4.3-114"2
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".
The Working Time Directive of 1993 protects employees against working weeks in excess of 48 hours, daily rest times of less than 11 hours and holidays shorter than 4 weeks. These are all minimum provisions and could easily be tightened up. This is, above all, necessary to prevent governments of EU Member States from considering these European minimum provisions as normal and adjusting their national legislation accordingly, as the Dutch Minister De Geus appears to want to do. In practice, the directive is being undermined by a concession made at the time to the – then Conservative – British Government. The opt-out clause means that individual British employees, when signing their contract of employment, are asked to waive their rights. People who are not prepared to do this often have to make way for people who are. An additional problem is that hours on call for fire fighters and medical staff are often not included in their working hours. Since this has now been changed by a judgment of the Court of Justice, these people are brought within the scope of the opt-out clause. This makes it possible to get people to work for excessively long periods of time. By a narrow majority, the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs has chosen in favour of an infringement procedure against the British Government and of abolishing the individual opt-out. Today, this proposal has been scuppered by a Conservative majority"@en1
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