Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-15-Speech-1-083"
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"en.20081215.14.1-083"2
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"Mr President, I want to go back to the basis of this being a health and safety directive. Because it is based on health and safety we do not expect opt-outs on health and safety, nor do we expect competition on labour standards within the European Union. This was supposed to be about common standards because many of our workers face the same difficulties.
Let us look at some of the health issues that many of our Member States are dealing with at the moment: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stress. Stress is the second biggest cause of time off work in the UK: 13 million working days are lost through stress, depression, anxiety, with a cost of GBP 13 billion a year – if we are looking at economics, and some of us like to look at economics in the round, Mr Clark. All these problems and even issues relating to obesity and binge drinking have links with a long-hours culture. It is not the only factor, but it is certainly significant.
We are not just talking about occasional long hours. There is plenty of flexibility within the current directive and in the proposed changes, which will allow businesses to cope if they have a sudden rush of work, providing they then balance out the time for their employees. The issue is persistent long hours. The risk of a personal accident at work increases if you are working 12 hours or more; tired workers are dangerous workers. Road safety experts believe that exhausted drivers account for more accidents than drunk drivers. If you are asking people to work long hours, be aware that this is a problem, be aware that productivity goes down, be aware that creativity goes down – which is not good for a knowledge-based economy. It certainly does not add a lot of quality to the work-life balance if people are too tired to read to their kids when they get home. Moreover, the majority – 66% – of workers in the UK doing long hours are not paid for those hours. It is part of a long-hours culture, where you express your commitment to your work by being present, not necessarily by being productive.
To those who argue that the opt-out reduces bureaucracy, I would say that records of hours worked should be kept anyway. If you look at the new proposals there is certainly no reduction of bureaucracy in the Council’s proposal."@en1
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