By Martin Banks - 15th December 2008
Europe's workers need smarter work, not longer work
Stephen Hughes
More and more people are forced to work long hours to make enough to live on. This is a slave-labour approach to working time
Martin Schulz
What is at stake this week is to know whether we want to make social progress or to go back to the dark times of the industrial revolution in the 19th century
Alejandro Cercas
The leader of parliament’s second biggest political group has vowed to ‘end Europe’s culture of long working hours’.
The pledge, by PES leader Martin Schulz, comes as MEPs are set to deliver a major blow to the UK government this week by voting to end Britain's controversial opt-out from the maximum 48-hour week for Europe's workers.
The Strasbourg plenary begins debating the 15-year-old working time directive (WTD) today and some expect deputies to throw a spanner in the works of a compromise reached by the 27 EU governments earlier this year.
UK ministers agreed to extend the rights of permanent staff to temporary employees after just 12 weeks' employment in return for retaining the right of an estimated 2.3 million workers to work more than 48 hours a week.
If MEPs vote to scrap the opt-out - the vote on Wednesday coincides with a meeting of EU employment ministers - it would force parliament, the commission and member states to reach a new deal. The opt-out could then be scrapped in 2012.
Schulz and other group members will take part in what is expected to be a massive demonstration against the opt-out by trades unionists and doctors in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
UK Labour deputies are said to be split on whether to join the Tories and Liberal Democrats in trying to save the opt-out but Schulz, a German MEP, said he expects most Socialist members to fight ‘for an end to Europe's culture of long hours at work.’
He claims that working more than 48 hours a week can be ‘dangerous, is bad for health and has no place in a civilised society that reconciles work with family life.’
Schulz said that, "More and more people are forced to work long hours to make enough to live on. This is a slave-labour approach to working time."
PES spokesman on social policy, UK deputy Stephen Hughes, said "Working more does not necessarily mean earning more. Most of the 3.2 million British workers who chose to work more than 48 hours a week state that they did not earn more. Seven out of 10 workers say they would like shorter working time.
"Long working hours do not guarantee that a firm will perform better, either. We know that countries with shorter working hours have greater productivity.
"Europe's workers need smarter work, not longer work."
Another PES deputy, Alejandro Cercas, parliamentary negotiator on working time, said: "Freedom of choice for workers is often an illusion".
"What is at stake this week is to know whether we want to make social progress or to go back to the dark times of the industrial revolution in the 19th century.
"Doctors must be able to count time on stand-by at hospitals as working time. Who wants to be operated on by a doctor who is falling asleep on his feet because he has been working non stop for 20 hours."
News of the challenge to Britain's opt-out emerges as the Trades Union Congress in the UK publishes a report today claiming that ending it would cause businesses little difficulty, improve health and safety and reduce the number of accidents caused by stress or tiredness.
EU business lobbies, however, last week wrote to all 785 MEPs urging them to support the "pragmatic" compromise adopted by governments. A no vote, they said, "is something that the EU simply cannot afford in the present economic climate."
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