Philip Bushill-Matthews, MEP for Warwickshire, on.....the Working Time Directive

20 April 2009

THE G20 leaders have convinced themselves that the world’s financial problems are being resolved. Meanwhile the public remain equally convinced that taxes and unemployment are rising regardless, and that the only people who are happy are the politicians.

The UK will fare worse than most, but in Spain the problems are particularly acute. The construction sector which has boomed has now stalled. Unemployment is forecast to hit 19 per cent. With average wage rises growing three times faster than productivity throughout the past decade, a day of reckoning was always coming.

The question now is: what are their politicians doing to make their labour market more competitive and more flexible? Well, in Brussels their politicians are making it worse.

The European Commission has proposed a review of the Working Time Directive, the legislation which prescribes how many hours people should be graciously permitted to work. The UK has an opt-out – whereby individuals can choose to work longer hours, and over three million British workers indeed do just that.

Fourteen other EU Member States now want to use the opt-out too. That should suggest that it was a duff directive in the first place, but that is far too obvious for certain politicians.

The MEP responsible for guiding revision of this legislation through the European Parliament is a Spanish Socialist, supported by British Labour MEPs. They are determined the opt-out should go, that people should be forced to work fewer hours.

Conservatives believe we should bin the directive rather than ban the opt-out, and that the UK offers over three million reasons why.

Battle is currently joined, and the outcome will be known within weeks. It is a battle for basic freedom of choice - it will also show which politicians are in touch with reality, and which live in their own separate world.
Philip Bushill-Matthews
Warwickshire-based MEP

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