Why shouldn't we have restricted work hours?

[ben_packard]

I can hear the cries of back off brussels from the 'man in the pub' but isn't this new european removal of the opt out a good thing? Firstly it's unfair on the rest of europe, but most importantly it seems pretty progressive a policy. It's all very well saying that noone can force you to work longer than 48 hours, but see who gets promoted if you refrain while others around you take advantage of the opt out. That means it hits hardest those with other commitments (ie families) and in particular women.

PS it says a lot that the european socialist group pushed this through while the so-called Labour party here object.

[Warpy]

1. Any law which has a loophole is a bad law.

Either they restrict hours, or they don't. You're right that this law will hit women with families the hardest, and I'm sure that's exactly what it's designed to do.

[D-Notice]

2. Who actually works more than

48 hrs per week anyway?

All I can think of are Junior Doctors...

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Newsnight said last night about 3 million do in the UK

roughly 1 million managerial, 1 million technical, and 1 million manual, secretarial or unskilled.

[Guy_Montag]

4. I have done,

actually it's pretty common in academia to work long hours.

The best I've managed was a week of 84 hours, followed by 10 weeks of 66 hours. Then back to 9 to 5 for the rest of the year. I had to sign a working time regulation exemption form to get the job. The pay was shit, but it was worth it, I got to go to Antarctica.

Now I work on ships from time to time, officially we're not supposed to work more than 77 hours a week, 14 hours a day & have at least one break of at least 6 hours in 24. But it's easy to get pushed into doing more than that.

Apart from those rather bizarre jobs, I know a lot of people that work in my department at university who work long into the evening, partly thorugh choice, but mostly just to get some research done (rather than admin).

[aneerkoinos]

7. UK universities

The ultimate sweat-shop.

I've got a friend working at at University of London, and he's not happy.

But this directive has little to nothing to do with how much scientists, artists etc. work (on their "own" time).

[T_i_B]

6. I can think of a few

I used to work with one guy who, when he was told he could only work so much overtime at one firm went and got a second job with Royal Mail. He was very aware of this legislation and was fervently opposed to it. Wonder how this affects him?

[Vladimir]

5. The real problem ain't the legislation, its the PR

notice how Labour have led everyone on a merry dance around this issue: Tony Blair wants the opt-out, but Labour MEPs vote to scrap it, so Blair appears like the defender of British rights while his MEPs look like surrender-monkeys. The worst thing is, I am not even sure that this is how Labour want it to look, given that the referendum is coming up. But it does expese the fundamental problem with this legislation, and most EU legislation in general, which is that laws passed in Brussels are too easy to smear and too hard to defend back in the UK. Hence whether the legislation passed is good or not, support for it is undermined all too easily back home where people feel they weren't consulted/listened to (regardless of whether they were or not) and end up disliking the law for the sole reason that its an EU law. I would much rather this good (on the whole, although the way the average is calculated is potentially problematic) piece of legislation had been passed by the Labour government while it had its fuck-knows-how-big majority, then like this.