Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-09-Speech-1-082"
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"en.20040209.5.1-082"2
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"Mr President, the exercise that we are currently carrying out to revise a 1993 directive on the organisation of working time is worthwhile. It should not, however, have diverged either needlessly or too far from the objective pursued, that is to say the possible amendment of the directive in order to guarantee a better level of health and safety protection for workers.
The opinion of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities is, unfortunately, another typical example of that very process, since it made a brilliant job of missing the point of the report.
I had tabled a series of amendments aimed at removing from the text of this opinion the obvious falsehoods, according to which working hours are apparently being extended all over the place in the European Union and long working hours being imposed in our Member States, with negative effects on our health, well-being and appetite for life. The opinion then concludes by heaping criticism on the would-be culture of long working hours for high level professionals and others, managers in particular.
These generalisations and falsehoods do not serve our objective, designed to promote a better level of health and safety protection for workers. For some here, a massive reduction in working time is the universal remedy for all problems. That being said, I agree that the Lisbon Agenda, which sets the goal of a 60% employment rate for women by 2010, will not be respected without prior progress in reconciling professional life and family responsibilities. I also agree that couples need to be better at dividing domestic tasks and educational responsibilities and, on this subject, there should be a response on the part of men, because women are still forced to take on, to a disproportionate degree, the double burden of professional work, on the one hand, and of family responsibilities on the other.
I regret that my attempts to qualify the statements of some Members and to re-establish the truth did not find favour with the Committee on Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities and, above all, I regret that the rapporteur repeated certain falsehoods, in particular that which would have us believe that working hours continue to be extended in the European Union when, in the majority of Member States, the opposite is true.
My group has tabled a host of amendments designed to re-establish truth and reason on this sensitive issue and aimed, in particular, at those populists who would have our European citizens believe that they can always work a lot less to earn a lot more than their colleagues in other parts of the world."@en1
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