Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-09-Speech-1-068"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20040209.5.1-068"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, as we know, this 1993 directive, which lays down minimum conditions governing the organisation of working time, with a view to ensuring a high level of health and safety for workers, should have been transposed into national law by 1996, establishing the possibility of limited derogation. The truth of the matter is that various Member States have used and abused these derogations and have not complied with the provisions therein, especially the upper limit of working time in sectors such as health, and the hotel and catering industries. Once again, now that the seven-year deadline has elapsed, the Commission has regrettably given no clear signal as to how the problems that have come to light are to be solved.
Hence my endorsement of most of the proposals contained in the Cercas report, in particular the provision of an amended directive resolving existing problems and ensuring a higher level of health and safety protection for workers. I also welcome the comparison study on the repercussions of long working hours on the family and on health, and the effect on both sexes. A further welcome proposal is the provision of protection for freelance workers and others whose safety is endangered by workers exhausted from working such long hours.
The Court of Justice has ruled in a number of cases, and has included time spent on call as working time, thereby confirming the fundamental principle that time not entirely available to workers due to work commitments must be regarded as working time. I congratulate Mr Cercas on the work he has carried out and, as he states in his report, derogations in the form of individual opt-out clauses must be scrapped and we must work towards reducing the pressures and eliminating the abuses that undermine family life.
My group, the Confederal Group of the European United Left, has tabled proposals that would enable us to extend these rights a little further. We have called for a revision of the directive, initially reducing the maximum working week from 48 to 42 hours; and for a gradual reduction in the working week to 36 hours, over the course of the next seven years. We hope that this would lead to further reductions in working time and a redistribution of work in the Member States, which are effective ways of reconciling family and professional life, of promoting equal rights for women and of combating unemployment.
Lastly, I deplore the fact that the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats persists in disparaging the report approved by the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, which only serves to show that they are perfectly happy to perpetuate an unacceptable state of affairs that undermines effective health and safety protection of workers. You can therefore be sure that we shall be voting against these proposals, as we did in the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples