Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-15-Speech-1-074"
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"en.20081215.14.1-074"2
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"Mr President, the Council common position is, of course, not ideal but I am well aware that it has taken many years of negotiations by Member States to actually get this far. Most of us have also been working on this for a number of years.
I have always supported the retention of the opt-out, but I wanted it tightened up so that it would be truly voluntary. I am pleased that the opt-out, now within the common position, cannot be signed at the same time as the contract and that you can opt out of the opt-out at any time. This is a far more transparent way of protecting workers’ rights than using a definition of autonomous worker that is so loose it could apply to anyone, as it does in many Member States, or the use of multiple contracts, whereby an employer can employ the same employee on one, two or even three contracts, something which is used in some other Member States. If there is an abuse of the opt-out by the employer, then the worker can take them to an employment tribunal. My fear is that, if we lose the opt-out, we will force more people into the grey economy and then they will not be covered by health and safety legislation, in particular the Dangerous Machinery Directive. All legal workers are covered by these directives, whether they opt in or opt out of the Working Time Directive. In these difficult economic times, it is very important that workers are able to earn overtime if they want to and that employers also have flexibility.
I have more difficulty with regard to on-call time not being considered as working time in the common position. That is why I tabled my amendment in the Employment and Social Affairs Committee to say that on-call time should be classed as working time. Unfortunately, I did not get the support from the Socialist or the EPP groups for my amendment. What we have now in the Cercas report is that on-call time should be classed as working time, but that collective agreements or national law are allowed to rule otherwise. This, to my mind, is not a major change from what is already in the Council common position, just a slight difference of emphasis. I did not retable my amendment because I knew that the Socialist and EPP groups would not vote for it. I suspect, however, that we might have to go to conciliation but I also suspect that the Council will not move. If there is no agreement, then I hope the Council will think again and that the health sector will be dealt with separately, something which I have long called for. To my mind, the revision of this directive was only really necessary to deal with the SIMAP and Jaeger judgments by the European courts, and that is all that we should have looked at."@en1
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