EU Court of Injustice rules that travelling time is working time

The EU Court of Justice has ruled that the time taken to travel to the first job of the day for people workers without a fixed office should be counted as working time.

The ruling means that travelling salesmen, plumbers, gas fitters, etc. who have no fixed office but travel directly to client locations from home start working from the minute they leave their home for the purposes of the Working Time Directive. It means there will be fewer hours for workers to make money unless they give up their right not to work more than 48 hours.

Once again, the EU Court of Injustice has issued a ruling that is supposed to enhance worker rights but in reality will result in more workers waiving their rights to be able to continue to do their job effectively and make enough money to pay the bills.

Grayling: Saving the €uro is more important than saving us from the EU

Earlier this month Camoron went to Germany and agreed to wave through Angela Merkel's Fourth Reich enabling treaty without the required referendum in exchange for her thinking about letting us continue to opt out of bits of the Working Time Directive.

Dear Dave, this is not the
time to fold

She's obviously had a think and decided the answer is no because the plan to exact "reform" of the WTD in exchange for creating a new Greater German Empire has been dropped.

Chris Grayling MP said that doomed attempts to save the €uro are more important than matters of national interest and sovereignty so they would let the EU get on with whatever it wants to do and hope that non-€urozone members don't lose out in the process.

So basically, the British government has the strongest hand it could possibly have and instead of capitalising on that and wringing a string of concessions out of the EU in exchange for illegally depriving us of a referendum on the Fourth Reich enabling treaty, they've folded!

Cameron agrees to Fourth Reich treaty

Cast Iron Dave has agreed to wave through German treaty changes to create the Fourth Reich without a referendum and in exchange Angela Merkel has agreed to have a think about giving us permission to continue opting out of the more damaging clauses of the EU Working Time Directive.

Ok, zis time you be Eva Braun and
I'll be ze Führer

This is the kind of pathetic concession that the Tories are talking about when they talk about "repatriation" of powers from the EU.  They don't mean doing away with EU competencies or repealing unpopular directives, they mean having a think about keeping opt-outs that we already have.

There is no provision for returning powers from the EU to national governments in the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty, powers can only flow one way.  There is no political will behind the "repatriation" of powers either in the British government or the EU, nor is there a way of actually doing it.  The Tories know this and that's why they refuse to tell us how it would work, why they refuse to demand concessions in exchange for signing treaties, it's why no power has ever been returned from the EU to national governments and why a British government official says that there is no intention of trying.

NHS Trust blames EU regulations for cut-backs

Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust are currently consulting on changes to the services they provide at the two hospitals. Services are going to have to be cut back and there's even the possibility that both hospitals will have to be closed and replaced with a single hospital.

Along with the usual reason of never having enough money, the booklet they've produced lays the a large portion of the blame on the EU Working Time Directive and the fact that abolishing our opt-out is going to mean staff shortages and increased wage bills.

It's refreshing to see someone like an NHS Trust going off message and telling people that stupid EU regulations are to blame for bad things that are happening. But what would be really refreshing would be the NHS Trust and other public services such as the fire service who are suffering at the hands of EU regulations to begin actively campaigning against them.

The NHS has a duty to provide a public service and if the EU is stopping them from doing that then they have a duty to oppose it.

Working Time Directive will cost billions

Earlier today I wrote about the EU Parliament voting to abolish the UK's opt-out of the EU Working Time Directive. Predictably, the majority of MEPs voted to abolish the UK's opt-out even though it has nothing to do with their own countries.

Bizarrely, the European Parliament has voted against the European Council and European Commission and decided to include on-call in working time for the purposes of the directive.

So what does this mean? Let me put a personal perspective on this act of lunacy ...

I work for a large multi-national supporting a couple of IT systems for a government department that require 24 hour support. The systems are predominantly supported by myself and another person on-site during core hours of 8am and 6pm. To provide the 24 hour support, we take it in turns to be on-call at home and go into the office if something goes wrong.

From my employers point of view this decision by the European Parliament drops them in the brown stuff because they will have to employ another four people to provide 24 hour support for these systems.

From my own point of view this decision drops me very deeply in the brown stuff because being on-call supplements my income by several thousand pounds a year. With a wife and four children to support, I'm going to rely on tax credits to plug the gap.

As is so often the case with decisions emanating from our masters on the continent, the rights that they parade in front of us as examples of the benefit of EU membership aren't really rights at all, they're obligations. Workers in the UK currently have the right to refuse to work more than 48 hours per week but that's not good enough for the eurocrats who insist that workers exercise their "rights" whether they want to or not.

Abolishing the opt-out is going to cost the UK billions. The cost to the taxpayer alone is going to be huge in topping up wages and paying increased costs for PFI projects and contracts with private companies.

I wonder if this is another one of those obvious benefits of EU membership the British government talks about when anyone questions why we're paying billions of pounds a year to belong to the EUSSR.

EU vote on Working Time Directive

MEPs are voting later today on whether to abolish the UK's derogation on the Working Time Directive that allows workers to choose whether or not they want to work more than 40 hours per week.

The EU is a socialist behemoth and naturally supports abolishing the rights of workers to decide how many hours they work but in the real world businesses and workers are worried. For some people, working long hours is the only way to pay the bills.

In the soviet dream-land occupied by most European politicians, a brain surgeon and a road sweeper should get the same pay but on planet earth that's not the case and it's never going to be the case and so tens of thousands of people have no choice but to work long hours to put food on the table.

The latest estimate is that there may be up to 3 million unemployed people in the next year or so as businesses cut costs and shed jobs to cope with the global recession. Employing more people to do the same amount of work as their current workers is simply going to drive a thousands of employers out of business. The cost of an employee isn't a simple calculation of x pounds multiplied by the number of hours they work, there are insurances, admin costs, equipment costs, etc. for every employee before they even do an hours work.

Struggling companies don't need these extra costs. If the EU is serious about wanting to tackle recession then the last thing they should be doing is increasing the burden on employers.

Open Europe: The end of the opt-out from EU working time rules and what it could mean for Britain

Open Europe

Invites you to a debate:

"Kicking us when we're down? The end of the opt-out from EU working time rules and what it could mean for Britain"

Wednesday 10 December 2008
3.00pm to 4.30pm

Dundee Room, Ely House, 37 Dover St, London W1S 4NJ

With:

David Yeandle, Head of Employment Policy, Engineering Employers' Federation

David Coats, Associate Director of Policy, The Work Foundation

Alistair Tebbit, Head of EU and Employment Policy, Institute of Directors

Paul Sellers, Senior Policy Officer, Trades Union Congress

On 17 December, the European Parliament is due to vote on amendments to the EU's Working Time Directive, which could spell the end of the UK's opt-out from rules on maximum hours of work. To discuss what this could mean for British workers and the UK economy, please join us for this important and timely debate.

Places are limited. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Susannah Prins: 0207 197 2333 or susannah@openeurope.org.uk