LTB 48 hour working week

[dpb]

Ltb from C.W.U. HQ should be attached :

subject E.U. legislation on 48 hr working week and U.K. opt out .

[Yahoorsur]

The EU's Employment and Social Affairs Committee's 5th November decision disagrees with the EU Council of Ministers which had on the 8th June again proposed retaining the "Opt-Out", subject to no more than 60 hours on average a week when calculated over a period of three months or 65 hours where there is no collective agreement and when the inactive period of on-call time is considered as working time. The UK government reached the agreement in June with other Member States whereby in return for being allowed to keep its opt-out from the 48 hour week, the UK would support the Temporary Agency Workers Directive, which is due to give temporary agency staff similar rights to permanent workers, the right to equal pay, unfair dismissal, training, holiday entitlement and pension entitlement to their permanent equivalents. The UK Government had previously opposed the introduction of the Temporary Agency Workers Directive legislation, stating that it would have a disproportionate effect on the UK’s flexible labour market as one third of all agency workers in Europe employed in the UK

Thats taken from the LTB,here's something from the Guardian

'On Thursday BT cut 10,000 jobs in one day. See how the lid is being lifted on the "flexible" work culture beneath the surface glitz of the boom years. Which jobs will go? Don't worry, said the BT boss, Ian Livingston: "Most job losses will come from contractors and third parties." The brunt will be born by thousands of agency workers owed no redundancy. That's what "flexible" means, whose virtues Gordon Brown so often preached to recalcitrant Europe.

In BT's Chester call centre agency, workers were fired with three weeks' notice and no compensation. Most had worked there several years, paid a third less than permanent staff, with no sick pay or pension. I spoke to Simon Jones, a 27-year-old who has worked for BT Openreach for nearly four years. His agency says he'll get no redundancy: instead this week they will deduct £100 from his £7.05 an hour payslip as overpaid holiday money he will now never earn - and there's nothing he can do about it. The 5.5% of the UK workforce that is temporary will be first out everywhere - the "flexible" army that fuelled the boom: cheap, no strings, with no compensation to ease job-hunting on £60.50 a week jobseeker's allowance.

For the past 11 years Labour obstructed the EU temporary workers directive to give agency workers equal treatment. Finally, the government was arm-twisted into signing up in the annual pre-party conference bartering for union support. But it won't come into effect for over a year, so it's no help now'.


so i aint gonna praise New Labour for doing the decent thing,they only did it because they came to an agreement over the opt out,what a bunch of hypocrites.They really are a bunch of sh***s

[DGP1]

So, does that mean no more 48hr+ weeks at least within 3 years.