NEWS | Wednesday, 24 December 2008

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Working to live

The European Parliament has voted for an EU-wide working time limit of 48 hours. But why isn’t this good news for Malta’s unions? asks MATTHEW VELLA

Last week, MEPs voted to scrap national opt-outs to the Working Time Directive and enforce an EU-wide maximum working week of 48 hours, in open defiance of a group of member states led by the UK.
For countries like the UK and Malta, the Parliament’s vote is not good news. Scrapping the opt-out would mean ending the right for workers to decide whether they want to work longer than the 48-hour limit. As things stand, the MEPs are now in open conflict with Europe’s national governments.
Open Europe, a London-based think tank, estimates that ending the opt-out could cost the UK economy between £47.74 billion and £66.45 billion by 2020, stripping both workers and employers of vital flexibility needed in the European economy.
The debate over working hours has always been controversial since the first directive was adopted in 1993, when the opt-out was inserted at the behest of the UK government. Despite Gordon Brown’s support of the opt-out, a majority of Labour MEPs voted against their own prime minister in the EP vote.
Not so Malta, where unions, and MEPs from both sides of the divide have advocated their support for the opt-out, against vital safeguards. Thursday’s vote was no exception.
Labour’s MEPs were amongst those who did not join their colleagues in support of the phasing out of the opt-out. They say it will be those low-income workers who “unfortunately” depend on overtime to cope with the cost of living that will suffer if the opt-out is removed. Like their liberal and christian-democrat counterparts, they want workers to choose if they should work longer hours.
Opting out of life?
You will find, as always, very convincing arguments both for, and against allowing workers to work over the 48-hour weekly limit.
Principally, it’s a question over whether workers should have the “right” to work over 48 hours, or if that right simply is to the benefit of employers and to the detriment of workers’ health.
So far, every member state has had the right to ‘opt out’ of the Working Time Directive’s limit on weekly working time. In a bid to appease MEPs, EU ministers tried to mollify the opposition to the opt-out by introducing more safeguards on the opt-out to make sure it was really voluntary, and not an imposition by employers.
For example, the common position argued for an opt-out that cannot be signed at the same time as the contract of employment, and that workers could opt out of the opt-out at any time they wanted.
Despite this tightening of the screws, a mainly Socialist-led bloc of 421 MEPs managed to vote for the Alejandro Cercas report advocating the removal of the opt-out.
Critics say the opt-out only opens the door to discrimination amongst workers. It is discriminatory for workers who do not want to work over the eight-hour overtime limit, leading employers to favour those workers who will work the longer week. They say the opt-out leads to social dumping, harms health and safety at work, as well as people’s ability to reconcile work and family life. In Cercas’s words, the vote safeguards the concept of “working to live and not living to work.”
John Monks, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), welcomed the vote, saying it defeated moves to make it easier for bad employers to impose excessive working hours.
So what happens if the opt-out gets removed?
Supporters of the clause say it could push workers into the grey economy, either working longer hours illegally or shifting to other jobs where they would not be covered by health and safety laws, or other social benefits. They say the opt-out increases flexibility in labour markets, particularly in difficult economic times, helping employers to deal with fluctuations in demand.

Malta’s reality
While sounding ironic for Labour’s MEPs, and unions, to replicate the rhetoric invoked by liberal counterparts and employers, it is also true that overtime, and additional part-time jobs are part of the reality of Maltese workers.
Over here, the average time worked nationally is 41.2 hours per week. Men work a weekly 42.9 hours while women work 38.3 hours, on average.
The gender gap could speak volumes about this situation: in a country where the female labour rate is phenomenally low compared to the other EU member states, it means there are more men working the 60-65 hour week, and leaving women at home.
But overtime and part-time jobs are vital stop-gaps for segments of workers who need to work longer to make ends meet. No secret is made of Malta’s burgeoning population of part-timers, many of them precarious workers whose lives depend on one or more part-time jobs. By March 2008, part-time employment had risen by 2,608, with those having a part-time job as their primary occupation going up by 1,664 persons.
Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil is hedging his bets on the concilitation stage where the vote will have to face the national governments, an obstacle which could probably mean a watering down of the position of MEPs or a compromise on other points.
In an ominous warning worthy of a movie cliffhanger finale, Busuttil said “it’s not over until it’s over.”
That’s because the directive now goes to a conciliation committee, a ‘last-chance saloon’ of negotiations between MEPs and national governments.
While MEPs are set for a showdown, it is already looking quite straightforward that member states will not be giving in to the MEPs, making this victory short of the rubber-stamp approval it needs. If the conciliation process fails, the current directive with its present opt-outs will remain in place.

mvella@mediatoday.com.mt

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