UK government struggles with working time rules

Date: 06/02/1997

By Rory Watson

THE UK government is making no headway in its battle to escape the Union's working time legislation, with its EU partners deliberately putting the demand into cold storage until after the British general election.

London is insisting that radical changes to the Union's health and safety regulations are essential before it can endorse the revised Maastricht Treaty due to emerge from the Intergovernmental Conference at the Amsterdam summit in June.

It is demanding that all such future legislation be adopted by unanimity rather than by majority vote and says the UK should have an opt-out from the 48-hour week directive.

But officials acknowledge that the argument will not come to a head until the final hectic weeks of the IGC talks.

“There will be no solution until the end-game. Others do not want to get engaged in negotiation until they know the political colour of the government with which they will be dealing. There is no point in banging your head against something if you do not need to,” explained one senior official.

By putting the issue on the back burner, the rest of the Union is clearly hoping that it would disappear in the event of a Labour victory in the British election, which must be held by 1 May at the latest.

In a bid to keep the UK's demands in the negotiating arena, Prime Minister John Major insisted in a speech in Brussels this week: “We will require our exemption to be firmly re-established in the current intergovernmental negotiations at or before Amsterdam.”

Major quoted a survey from the UK's Institute of Directors which showed that half its members believed that the EU's working time legislation would cost jobs in their companies. He described this measure as “the thin end of a potentially very large wedge”, and used it as an example to attack the European social model.

Commission President Jacques Santer hit back at Major's criticism. He insisted that the social chapter and strengthening Europe's competitiveness were not incompatible. “Not only are they compatible, they are complementary. Let us stop the caricatures,” he said.

The British proposals for reforming Article 118 of the Maastricht Treaty and inserting a specific protocol to allow the UK to ignore the working time legislation were tabled at the IGC on the day that its legal challenge was rejected by the European Court of Justice last November.

Explaining its move, the UK insisted it did not believe that the new health and safety treaty provisions introduced in 1987 should be used to cover issues such as holiday pay, nor be a basis “to allow the imposition of blanket restrictions on the organisation of work regardless of whether they are necessary or appropriate in specific circumstances”.

Similarly, it argues that the working time directive - which came into force last year and establishes mandatory rest periods, sets limits to night work and stipulates at least four weeks' annual paid holiday - should have been agreed under the Social Protocol accepted by the 14 other EU members.

Despite British opposition to the rules, they have provoked no controversy elsewhere in the Union and the European Commission is looking to extend their scope to a further 9 million employees, who were exempted from the original terms.

Officials are currently drafting legislation which would embrace eight new sectors, including the labour-intensive transport and offshore oil industries.

But there are signs that the proposal may not emerge from the Commission until after the British election, although officials this week denied reports that the delay was designed to avoid stoking up anti-EU feeling in the UK.