Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-166"
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"en.20000516.7.2-166"2
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"Mr President, this proposal will bring an additional seven million workers in Europe under the protection of the Working Time Directive, allowing them to have reasonable working conditions and proper rest periods. However, to get a 48-hour week, junior doctors must wait nine years minimum and possibly twelve years. I will not pretend to be happy with this situation. It is, however, the best that we could achieve if we were to end once and for all the Council's delaying tactics.
It has been obvious since 1993 that those excluded from the directive at that time would eventually come under its protection. One has to ask, therefore, why over that seven-year period virtually nothing was done in Ireland or in Britain to bring the number of doctors forward that would be needed to implement it.
In Ireland some junior doctors work over 100 hours per week, the average being 70 to 80. Only last night they suspended strike action which they had threatened because they have now reached an interim agreement which will ensure that they are actually paid for the overtime they work. In some cases they were not paid at all, in some cases only half the normal rate. Some progress has been made and no doubt the conclusion of the conciliation has helped them in that regard.
Through the Council of Ministers both Britain and Ireland fought tooth-and-nail to slow the process down. That was unfortunate. The working arrangements for junior doctors are like a horror story from a Dickensian novel of the nineteenth century. I find it bizarre that at the beginning of the 21st century we are still arguing for common sense with regard to health and safety. I would appeal to all national governments, including Ireland, not to utilise the additional provisions for extending the implementation of this directive beyond the nine-year period and would remind them that it is intended only as an exceptional measure if all other genuine steps have been taken to implement the measures here."@en1
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