Draft motion on the 48 hour week and the British "opt-out", prepared for Cambridge Trades Council, June 2005.
1) Cambridge and District Trades Union Council notes:
a) Workers in the UK work the longest hours in Europe. Nearly 4 million workers in the UK regularly work over 48 hours a week. 16% of workers work over 60 hours a week, compared to 12% in 2000.
b) The proportion of the UK workforce working over 48 hours a week is four times higher than the EU average, and sixteen times higher than the proportion of the Dutch workforce working over 48 hours a week.
c) Workers who regularly work more than 48 hours a week are at increased risk of heart disease, stress-related illnesses, mental illness and diabetes.
d) 61% of long-hours-workers in the UK do not receive any overtime pay – amounting to £23 billion pounds of unpaid wages each year.
e) Nearly two thirds of those workers who regularly work more than 48 hours a week have not given their agreement to opt out of the European Union (EU) Working Time Directive, which limits working hours to an average of 48 hours per week.
f) One in three of those workers who have signed an opt-out from the EU Working Time Directive were given no choice about signing away their rights and were pressurised into doing so by their employer.
2) Cambridge and District Trades Union Council further notes:
a) The UK opt-out from the EU Working Time Directive, negotiated by the last Tory government, was maintained by the Labour government elected in 1997.
b) In May of this year the European Parliament voted to scrap, over a period of three years, the ‘right’ of EU member states to allow an opt-out from the EU Working Time Directive.
c) The current Labour government had pledged itself to prevent abolition of the opt-out.
d) In June of this year a meeting of the EU Council of Social Affairs voted, at the initiative of UK Employment Minister Alan Johnson, not to endorse the decision of the EU Parliament to scrap the opt-out.
e) The UK opt-out therefore remains in force, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
3) Cambridge and District Trades Union Council believes:
a) The government’s support for the opt-out indicates its ongoing commitment to meet the demands of big business and private enterprise, not the needs of members of the trade union movement in the UK.
b) The current Labour government’s support for the Tories’ opt-out from the EU Working Time Directive makes a mockery of its supposed commitment to a ‘radical third term for working people’, on the basis of the ‘Warwick Agreement’ adopted by the Labour Party National Policy Forum in July of 2004.
4) Cambridge and District Trades Council therefore urges trade union bodies in its constituency to campaign through their unions national structures to:
a) demand that the government scrap the UK opt-out, and demand that the government supports the EU Parliament’s vote to abolish the opt-out throughout the EU;
b) demand in particular of Labour MPs in constituencies with which a union has a ‘constituency agreement’ (i.e. provides financial support) that they support abolition of the opt-out, as a condition of continuation of the constituency agreement;
c) campaign to ensure that the length of time over which the average working week is calculated under the Working Time Directive is not increased from the current 17 weeks;
d) ensure greater awareness amongst union members of their right to refuse to sign an opt-out without being penalised for refusing to do.
5) In pursuit of this resolution Cambridge and District Trades Union Council agrees to:
a) circulate copies of the motion to local trade union bodies;
b) produce and circulate a leaflet on the substance of the resolution;
c) offer speakers on the substance of the resolution to local trade union bodies.
