European Review Issue 36 page 4

THE VEXED QUESTION of the reform of the EU directive on working time, which has seen the UK’s attempt to hang on to its opt-out move from a minority of one to an alliance with the ‘new’ members and Germany, has had another airing by Finland, the current holders of the EU Presidency.

This is the fifth Presidency in a row to attempt to find a compromise between the ‘free to choose’ camp led by Britain and the health and safety approach favoured by France and its followers. At one time the UK was the only Member State to allow its workers to average more than 48 hours a week but the situation was complicated first by the accession of 10 new states in 2004 who were closer to Britain’s approach and then by cases in which the European Court of Justice established that on-call time spent by doctors and others counted as working time. This meant that two-thirds of EU countries were not abiding by the directive and many said that their health services could not afford to do so. The cost to the UK’s National Health Service is estimated at £200 million a year.The Finnish plan involved a choice: if a country made use of the opt-out it could not allow employees to work more than an average of 60 hours a week in any four-month period; if it rejected the opt-out the maximum would have been 48 hours but calculated over 12 months. The second option allows account to be taken of holiday seasons and the ebb and flow of work.		According to the Finnish social affairs minister ‘we created a sort of menu solution that those countries who like to use the opt-out … don't get all the flexibilities we have in the directive’. As for a gradual ending of the opt-out, the proposal would have left the timing in the hands of national governments and the social partners. This was too much for a group of Member States led by France who wanted a firm date for the UK to give it up. For its part the British government hinted that it would accept 65 or 70 hours as the maximum but, backed up by Poland and Germany, stymied the deal as offered. The opposing camp then blocked agreement on on-call time. The TUC estimate that 800,000 workers in the UK would have to change their hours if the opt-out was ended with 130,000 regularly on more than 60 hours a week. The European Metalworkers Federation’s Bart Samyn commented ‘We need to find modern solutions for modern problems and not simply use longer working hours, which not only constitute a risk for workers’ health and safety but are also proven to be unproductive from an economic perspective’.
	Anti opt-out logo from European Federation of Public Service Unions

Turkish union takes to streets	Telework deal implemented
DESPITE HAVING NO LEGAL RIGHT TO strike the trade union representing 2 million Turkish civil servants is planning street protests and go-slows after pay negotiations with the government broke down. An offer of 3% for the first 6 months of 2007 plus another 3% for the second half of the year was deemed unacceptable by Ismail Hakkı Tombul of the Confederation of Public Sector Trade Unions (KESK) ‘What should be done now is to hold protests that will make people remember how important public sector workers are’, he said. Unions and opposition parties argue that inflation is running at about 10%, twice the target for the end of this year, and that a government clamp down on wages is inspired by pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to meet it. However Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin responded that civil servants had improved their financial position under his government ‘If they can buy a refrigerator and television with two or three salaries and now they can buy them with only one salary, it means their purchasing power has grown higher, not decreased’.	THE FIRST AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE Social Partners in the EU which they had to implement themselves has been given effect in all but four Member States plus Iceland and Norway. The deal on telework, signed in 2002, differed from previous ones, such as that on part time workers, in that no directive was passed. Instead the union and employers’ confederations undertook to transpose its text into the industrial relations systems in each country according to local custom and practice. In 2002 there were about 4.5 million employees ‘performing work, using information technology … which could also be performed at the employers premises … carried out away from those premises’ as they are defined in the text of the agreement. Now two-thirds of Europeans of working age would like to try it. In the UK, where it is estimated that about 8% of the workforce now come into this category, a code of conduct, backed by the Department of Trade and Industry is available as guidance and may be downloaded from the internet as a pdf file at:
	http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file27456.pdf

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