NEWS | Wednesday, 19 November 2008

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MEPs on collision course with ministers over opt-out

Matthew Vella
Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil has warned of a direct confrontation between the European Parliament and Europe’s ministers, as the parliament gets ready to vote whether to abolish the controversial “opt-out clause”, which allows employees to work over the generally adopted maximum of 48 hours per week.
Supporters of the opt-out clause, which allows member states to derogate from EU limits on the working week, say workers should have the choice to determine their own hours with their employers.
In December, MEPs will be voting on whether to retain the opt-out or not, before sending the amended law back to Europe’s Council of Ministers.
Busuttil said a large part of the European Peoples’ Party (EPP-ED) group in the European Parliament are in favour of the European Council’s position to preserve the opt-out.
“It is up to workers to work more than 48 hours if they choose to do so. We should not decide for them,” Simon Busuttil said in a World Organisation for Workers congress last week.
Busuttil said a measure of flexibility was needed to enable workers to decide if they wanted to work more than 48 hours a week, rather than deciding for them by changing the law.
He also said the system should not be abused, and employers should not be able to force employees to sign off their rights by getting them to accept to work endless overtime hours against their will.
The future of the opt-out is the single most controversial point in the reform of the Working Time Directive, which is a law that protects workers from exploitation by employers.
One of its main goals is to ensure that no employee is obliged to work more than an average of 48 hours a week. Employers in a number of states make use of the opt-out, but it is most widely used in the UK and Malta.
The European Commission’s view remains of proposing a specific upper limit for opted-out workers of 55 hours in any week, unless collective agreements or agreements between the social partners provided otherwise.
Labour’s head of delegation, MEP Louis Grech, said the party will also oppose the removal of the opt-out clause.
“The complete removal of the opt-out clause would have adverse repercussions on many sectors of the Maltese society, especially in the case of persons with lower than average income who depend highly on overtime and/or part-time work to make ends meet.
“The removal of this clause would lead to parts of this more vulnerable group not to be able to honour their various financial commitments, as for example in the case of mortgage repayments which are more widespread in Malta than in many other countries.”
Grech said that as much as the Maltese Labour delegation agrees with arguments in favour of enhancing work-life balance, it feels it is not yet opportune for Malta to do away with the clause. “As things stand today we would like to retain the individual’s right to choose. This position enjoys the broadest consensus in Malta, including trade unions.”

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