Battle over UK's Working Time opt-out enters final phase
Posted, March 17, 2009 @ 11:00
The Labour government must instruct their own MEPs to support the UK opt-out of the Working Time Directive, urged Philip Bushill-Matthews MEP, Conservative employment spokesman in the European Parliament, ahead of talks tomorrow between MEPs and EU ministers that could result in the UK losing their opt-out of the Working Time Directive.
Parliament, including many UK Labour MEPs, voted in December to remove the UK's opt-out of the Directive despite the Council of Ministers having earlier agreed a deal to keep it. Because of the differing positions of the parliament and council they have entered a period of 'conciliation' in an attempt to reach a compromise.
Mr Bushill-Matthews, who will be involved in the talks, said:
"Gordon Brown naively signed up to a package deal that saw Britain give ground on the Agency Workers Directive in exchange for our Working Time opt-out and then his own Labour MEPs voted to remove the opt-out."
"The Labour government must instruct their own MEPs to act in the interests of UK and EU workers to defend the opt-out. 15 EU nations now take advantage of the flexibility provided by the opt-out and none of them should back down.
"Scrapping the opt-out during the downturn is even more nonsensical than before and workers should be able to choose if they want to work longer hours to help pay the bills.