Working-time Directive

From my own observations, it's not unusual for ground staff to work, during the busy periods, 80 to 100 hours of overtime per month. The problem with increasing manpower to counter this is that in the low season you'll have far too many people sat around doing nothing. All to be paid for by people wanting return tickets for £10 plus tax. And taking on contractors isn't always the answer as they can't be licenced engineers, just spanner monkeys.
I avoid overtime like the plague except when it suits me. At the moment I want an EOS 20D, so I've slammed in the O/T. But boy do I feel it, both physiologically and from my wife.
Naaa, I've two things in life, time and health. O/T can't give me either.
To be fair to my company, I've never been pressurised by the management. But some of the guys are bombarded with peer pressure. I'll be buying their houses when the payments can't be met! (JUst joking there....)

Tony

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Discussed this with my bro recently, who works as an HGV driver. What happens when the 48 hours are up? Does he abandon his wagon on the hard shoulder and thumb a lift home, or break the law and perhaps jeopardise his license?

FWIW If he is driving on EU drivers hours then provided he is driving legally he will be within the directive regulations anyway.

andy c!

I must say I'm amazed at some of the hours people work but then I've always worked in the life and pensions industry where a full time week is generally 35 hours. Even with 2 hours overtime a day that would be below the European directive.

Surely 48 hours is enough isn't it (perhaps with the exception of those running their own businesses). I have heard people moaning about the reduction in their incomes if they are forced to restrict hours to 48 but what's the point in earning a bit more money if your wife and family rarely see you and, when they do, you're knackered?

As for unpaid overtime, unless your contract states you have to do this (and your salary reflects it) then it shouldn't happen. I have never and would never work unpaid overtime - if you don't pay me I won't do it and no amount of peer pressure would change my mind. Can't help thinking that if all employees took this line it would make management either cough up or get some extra staff in.

Matt.

The insidious thing about unpaid overtime is that you are in effect providing a capital gain to the employer, at no gain, but cost, to yourself, and denying someone else the chance of a job.

Or in other words, exploitation IMHO.

And contributing to continued unemmployment, or under-employment, with all the attendant cost and social issues, simply so some employer can make more profit at others expense.

Not very moral/ethical all round IMHO.

John...

I wonder how many hours our beloved European politicians "work"? And I use the word work in the loosest possible way.

It's typical of these EU directives that they tend to be thinking about large businesses when they draw up this sort of legislation. Surely the whole point of an opt-out was to allow people flexibility of the hours they choose to work. If there were issues with certain organizations forcing workers to choose to opt-out of the directive then target those organizations rather than removing the opt-out altogether.

I'm trying to grow a business at a time when the economic climate isn't particularily benificial. That means I and my fellow directors do work long hours (especially if you include the work we do at home etc.) but why shouldn't we be allowed to do so if we choose?

My sister and her partner don't have highly paid jobs and they have a young family to support. In order to bring in extra cash my sister has one day job and another evening job (at one point she had three different jobs) and her partner does as much overtime as he can get. They'll each work over 48 hours on a average week, but no-one is forcing them to do it - they do it so they can clear previously accrued debts and so they can afford a nice place to live, a car that doesn't break down all the time and the occasional holiday etc. If enforced (which it won't be) this change in legislation could force them back into poverty and spiraling debt.

Another problem with the legislation is that it appears almost entirely unenforcable. My company doesn't maintain timekeeping records so how would we know if someone was working more that the allowed amount of time anyway? Is the next step going to be a raft of new legislation to force companies to keep time records for all employees and have them clocking in and out?

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Originally posted by Mick Parry:
Chaps

My own take on this is that we are now in a meritocracy and it is survival of the fittest at a personel level right through to global level.

If you want a well paid job, you have to work at it and 48 hours is not that bad. If you can't hack it, resign and do something else. It is your choice.

I think that this is wrong on two scores. I have concerns about the use of this legislation but it as far as I can see it applies almost entirely to those guys in very poorly paid jobs e.g. sweatshops, catering, hospitality etc. Few of these people have a wide choice of jobs and are picking up what work they can and whilst some are happy to work until they drop, others are presented the opt-out with their employment contract and are routinely bounced into excessive hours. If people actively want to work extra jobs and don’t declare this to their primary employer then the WTD isn’t going to stop them. If people are in diffs and need to put in some long weeks or months then the new 12 month reference period is going to mean that they’re unlikely to be affected. I do find it galling when someone from the CBI asks who is going to pay these employees bills and council tax when they can’t do overtime, when the question should be why the wages they receive for 48 hours work aren’t sufficient to pay their basic bills? In the same vein I also think that if it’s necessary for both parents to effectively work 6-7 day weeks then I think that most of us should feel uneasy about how this affects the parent-child relationship.

A meritocracy relies on the ability of the person to do their job properly and what they achieve, not on who is willing to clock up the most hours to the detriment of their health, their family and eventually their performance on the job. Any well paid, professional employee routinely chalking up more than 48 hours per week points to outdated and defective management, bad company culture or indeed an employee who is simply not up to the job. In most of these situations the WTD won’t apply as it is the employee responding to peer and internal competitive pressures and making his own decision, rightly or wrongly, to work the longer hours. Steve, you like myself run a flexible system and there’s no question of compelling your employees to work beyond their contract hours, simply an agreement that the job is done in a timely fashion and if there’s a push at certain times then there’ll be leeway at others. Im my business all time is recorded for billing but AFAIK the WTD is inapplicable in this situation so it’s a non-issue.

Oh and with the UK average being 41 hours weekly, I’d say that working more than 48 hours every week, a whole extra day, is that bad. I’d be interested to see how many employees here routinely work close to 48 hours.

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In the same vein I also think that if it’s necessary for both parents to effectively work 6-7 day weeks then I think that most of us should feel uneasy about how this affects the parent-child relationship.

While I don't disagree with the sentiment in reality it probably has less of an affect on the kids than poverty and spiraling debt would.

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Originally posted by Steve G:

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In the same vein I also think that if it’s necessary for both parents to effectively work 6-7 day weeks then I think that most of us should feel uneasy about how this affects the parent-child relationship.

While I don't disagree with the sentiment in reality it probably has less of an affect on the kids than poverty and spiraling debt would.

If that’s the stark choice and the children aren’t suffering then fair point. But I think that the concern voiced here and elsewhere should be less about giving a mother and father the freedom to spend 6-7 days working away from their children to get themselves out of poverty and spiralling debt, and more about the nature of employment and a supposed living wage that forces, indeed makes it socially acceptable for both a mother and father to spend this amount of time away from their children. Irrespective of the effect on children, personal experience and anecdotal evidence informs that missing out on this time with their children is one real regret that will hit home much sooner than the deathbed and arguably there is a benefit for people to hear this advice from somebody else before the event rather than after.

IME many of the people who don't see any problem with employees working themselves into the ground are the same people who are opposed to wage regulation and whilst I have reservations about the WTD, you can see how this situation can quickly develop into a self-destructive race to the bottom with countries offering the promise of workers who will work for buttons until they drop. Then what? Broaden the intake to children and the elderly? I don’t see an easy solution but I think that the issues thrown up by the WTD raises larger, long-term concerns that can’t be simply be addressed by saying “fuck the Europeans” and crass inferring “yeah, the hours, the pay and conditions are crap but they’re the rules and if you don’t like it, lump it”.

Earwicker said "I rest my case"

You case being, presumably, to prove that you are really a 55 year-old retired major from Cheltenham who is continually angry at the world because of a vaguely unsettling feeling that everyone apart from him is having fun?

Matthew

The low paid have to work overtime to earn a decent wage; the higher paid have to work long hours to show "commitment" or because they think they're Gordon Gecko or that Horlicks woman.

The bosses are happy either way.

All this highlights the need for a decent minimum wage and appropriate staffing resource - both of which shareholders will oppose because it cuts their dividend.

I am employed to do 37 hours and that's what I do.

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Originally posted by Nigel Cavendish:
The low paid have to work overtime to earn a decent wage; the higher paid have to work long hours to show "commitment" or because they think they're Gordon Gecko or that Horlicks woman.

The bosses are happy either way.

All this highlights the need for a decent minimum wage and appropriate staffing resource - both of which shareholders will oppose because it cuts their dividend.

That point of view ignores the situation in small companies where it's "the bosses" that tend to work the long hours. In my industry the minimum wage isn't an issue (or at least it isn't currently - if your idea of a "decent" minimum wage meant say £30K though it could become a problem) but to raise staffing levels on the whim of a euro-politician definitely is. Part of our competition at the moment comes from offshore outsourcing companies and trying to compete against them is hard enough without adding to our troubles.