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FOLLOWING THE ORIGINAL Working Time directive (1993) and the proposal to extend it (see our Issue 5, page 7), the EU Conciliation Committee, which sorts out disagreements between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, has finally reached its conclusion. The original directive left out sectors such as shipping, railways and road transport because it was thought to be difficult to legislate for workers who were often away from home. However once it was found that many employees were 'non-mobile' the Commission sought to include them and, at the same time, the social partners in the maritime and rail sectors made agreements covering all the workers in these industries.
The new measure which amends the 1993 directive allows workers engaged in offshore work (where the place of residence and place of work are distant from one another), doctors in training, workers concerned with the carriage of passengers on regular urban transport services and certain railway transport workers to be exempted by Member States from provisions regarding daily rest, rest breaks, weekly rest, length of night work and reference periods. However, they are bound by all other provisions of the Directive, including : annual leave; all other provisions relating to night work such as health assessment and transfer of night workers to day work, guarantees for night-time working and notification of regular use of night workers; general health and safety protection; provisions governing the pattern of work; and provisions governing maximum weekly working time.
Junior doctors' long hours while training provoked disagreements between Member States, the Commission and the Parliament (see Issue 9 page 4). These have been resolved in the following way : doctors in training will be subject to all the provisions of the extension directive but national governments will have 4 years to legislate them into their laws and another 5 years to bring working hours down from the present 58 to 48 per week, on average. They can also ask for more time in further periods of 2 years and 1 year, in 'exceptional circumstances'. Thus the total length of time before trainee doctors are fully subject to the directive could be 12 years. Another recent development was the deal struck between employers and unions in civil aviation. On working hours this agreement actually lays down a maximum annual number which is less than that in the 1993 directive : 2,000 compared to 2,304.
The new extension directive which is estimated to include another 5.5 million workers in its provisions, must be adopted by the European Parliament and Council of Ministers in two months, after which it becomes EU law, and must be implemented by Member States within three years. This leaves road transport as the outstanding area of working time regulation. The European-level social partners in this sector tried and failed to reach an agreement on this issue - negotiations were finally declared to have failed at the end of September 1998 and the Commission subsequently issued a proposal for a directive designed to regulate working time for these workers. However, this proposal has proved to be controversial and is currently blocked in the Council of Ministers. Nevertheless, now that all the other areas which were previously excluded from the 1993 directive have been satisfactorily resolved, all effort can be channelled into finding a solution for road transport workers.
The provisions
(1993 Working Time Directive)
Over the past few months the European Commission and Eurostat have published two documents which describe and analyse the labour market in the EU. The first report into industrial relations in Europe is wide-ranging, examining wages, working time, social dialogue and legislation. More recently the 1999 European Community labour force survey has been produced. In the first the Commission finds that economic and monetary union (EMU) has fostered a climate of co-operation between employers, unions and governments while the Eurostat survey highlights the increase in the employment rate (persons in employment as a percentage of those of working age).
Despite the structural changes in industry and the wider economy, the social partners increased their influence during the nineties and in 11 Member States they concluded pacts with the national government to raise employment levels which increased from 61% to 62.1 % between 1998 and 1999. Labour disputes in the EU fell sharply in this period from 85 million working days lost through strikes in 1979 to less than 7 million in 1996. Wages grew slowly over the past two decades at rates below the growth in productivity. For this reason real unit labour costs fell by 6% between 1991 and 1998. Enlargement will bring into the EU countries with average wages of about €300 per month as opposed to €2000+ in many current Member States. However productivity is also very low in these countries and the Commission thinks that, rather than a threat, they will prove to be an immense market for goods from the present members.
On working time the reports detail the variation over the Community from an annual figure of 1,425 hours in the Netherlands in 1998 to 1,940 in Greece in the same year, the EU average being 1,660; the Eurostat survey which counts working hours per week found that the U.K. had the longest at 43.6 hours in 1999 with the average being 40.4 hours. However the Commission found that work patterns are changing with the aim of trying to achieve a balance of working life, family life and leisure time as well as flexibility for the employer. Part time work is increasing with 6% of men and over 30% of women involved in it in 1998.
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