Employee work hours per week in the UK

SID 0207505/1 PEOPLE AND WORK

When the directive was applied in the UK, the hours of workers was only reduced by 3%. Just under four million UK workers still work more than 48 hours per week, whilst more than half a million work in excess of 60 hours per week (appendix 1 and 2).

Many workers are still being pressured to work more than 48 hours per week by their employers. Although this practice is actually illegal under the UK law, the enforcement regime in the UK is far too weak to be able to protect the rights of these workers (appendix 3).

The effect of the opt-out and the UK's weak enforcement regime has been that the Working Time Directive has also failed to protect UK workers. The “minimum safety and health requirements for the organisation of working time promised by article 1.1 of the directive have not been applied in a good way in the UK. UK full-time workers work the longest hours in the EU (appendix 4), and this workers suffer from high incidence of all the ailments that are associated with working excessive hours, such as heart problems, stress and depression (appendix 5).

In September the European Commission decided to change some aspects of the working time directive. Some clauses in the proposal (still to be voted by EU ministers and the European Parliament) are sure to be met with strong apposition from the UK.

If approved, the proposal would amend the UK’s opt-out clause allowing employees an average working week of more than 48 hours.

The Commission wants to impose stricter conditions on opting out. At present, employers can ask employees to opt out of the working time regulations when they sign their employment contract. Under the new rules, employers would not be able to obtain employee’s consent at this time or during a probationary period. When consent is given, it would have to be in writing and would only be valid for one year, after which it could either be renewed of withdrawn, at the employee’s request.

This puts employers in the hand of their employees with regard to obtaining continued agreement to working more than 48 hours per week throughout their period of employment.

Removing the opt-out from probationary periods, which can last a year, could also have a significant impact on employers. It may mean recruiting additional staff to carry out the work. As many companies are staffed with people that usually do lots of overtime, once the opt-out is finished it will not be enough staff to do the work.

The commission has also proposed to rise the maximum hours up to 65 hours limit to any working week, unless a collective agreement provides otherwise. This may have adverse effect in workplaces that need of employees to work long hours for a short period (for example, in offshore oil operations). These employers may have to consider re-organising the distribution of work among their employees or, in the worst cases, recruiting more workers.

Some proposals do give employer a greater degree of flexibility. For example, the Commission suggests member states could have the option of extending the standard reference period for calculating an average working week from 17 weeks to one year, provided they consult both sides of industry first. This would allow employers to give workers longer hours in busy periods when the job demands it, and offset this against quieter times when they would work shorter hours.

The most significant threat to employers among the Commission’s suggestions is that it should report five years on whether the opt-out should ...