Is it time to remove the working time directive?

Yeager said:
And what about someone regularily coming to work with little/no sleep - a hazard to themselves and others don't you thing?
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Indeed... what's the EU directive to ensure employers ensure their employees don't watch late night porn during the week?
 
Porns as good in the morning as it is late at night.

Employer can give you your P45 for coming into work knackered everyday if its your own doing, they can't as easily if its because of them that you are so tired i.e. finishing a 12 hr shift and having to start another one in 3-4 hrs again.

Unless your a junior doctor of course where it appears to be perfectly fine to do 30+ hr shift making life/death decisions - yet air traffic controllers (who are technically doing the same thing) wouldn't do this amount of hours in a week! Can never get my head around that one.
 
The Working Time Act exists for H&S reasons. People who work long hours over a prelonged period of time usually end up with severe health issues and become a burden on the health and social welfare systems. It saves the taxpayer a lot of money.
 
csirl said:
The Working Time Act exists for H&S reasons. People who work long hours over a prelonged period of time usually end up with severe health issues and become a burden on the health and social welfare systems. It saves the taxpayer a lot of money.
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Yes, but 9-10 hours 5-6 days a week is hardly excessivly long hours.
 
It's hard to call - we've had staff who wanted to work every hour they can and threaten to leave if not given extra hours and one that did leave(they are not on or near the min wage btw). Yet NERA stand firm that giving them the hours is an issue.

In a different part of the business we have other staff members that work circa 4 days and occasionally (say 4 times a year) are asked to work 5.5 days, but we stopped because they are so non-functioning the following Monday, having had half Saturday and all Sunday off.

As an employer its takes time to get the balance to give each employee what they want and respect that not everyone wants the same thing re hours, and still not get up someones nose.............and from reading some of the posts regarding AL for marriage it would encourage you to offer only the minimum that is required and quit thinking about how to reward folks beyond that.
 
Good post Claire

Time is now long past to abolish this socialist directive, and to allow people the freedom to agree their own working hours (and pay rates) with their employer.
 
We need the 48 hour rule because some employers do not pay for overtime and expect you to work for nothing, a lot of staff employees are working overtime for no pay. I have also fallen foul of this, they write it into your employment contract before you are hired.
 
roker said:
We need the 48 hour rule because some employers do not pay for overtime and expect you to work for nothing, a lot of staff employees are working to this rule. I have also fallen foul of this rule, they write it into your employment contract before you are hired.
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So it's ok to work an extra 9 hours a week for nothing but not 10?
How about just paying overtime?

My problem is that if I want to earn extra money I can't work more than 9 hours paid overtime a week, even if both I and my employer want me to. For me that's a violation of my basic right to work.
 
Good luck arguing that in a court.

If you want to opt out of the WTD you can sign a disclaimer protecting your employer from any lawsuits that arise from your excessive working.

The WTD is there to protect the vulnerable from ruthless employers.
 
bond-007 said:
Good luck arguing that in a court.

If you want to opt out of the WTD you can sign a disclaimer protecting your employer from any lawsuits that arise from your excessive working.

The WTD is there to protect the vulnerable from ruthless employers.
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There is no legal opt out for employees, the government doesn't think they have the brains to make their own decisions, so we have no choice.

The WTD is there because the French socialists had a stupid law stopping people working more than 35 hours. It was screwing up the French economy so they thought they'd screw everyone else up as well and lo and behold the EU got the working time directive. The Brits opted out and as far as I know the swath of employment protection laws they have in place have, so far, protected the poor stupid "wurkors" from the evil capitalist employers.

So in the UK if an adult wants to work hard to provide for their family they still can. Irish people, it seems, aren’t capable of such weighty decisions.
 
Purple said:
There is much talk about the need to cut the minimum wage since people can’t afford to live on any less.
Why not remove this law which limits the right of a person to work when and how much they choose? That way a person on €6.00 an hour could work 60-70 hours a week and have a reasonable income. 70 hours is 85.5 pay hours. That’s €513 (or about €25’000 a year) at €6 an hour.
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Er, yes, because the problem is that there's too much work to go around.

*bashs head off keyboard*
 
Sherman said:
No there wouldn't. Lump of labour fallacy

It`s easy to dismiss the benefit of reducing working hours by the above link.
Our gov. and most posters here agree that spending has to be cut. Take teachers for example...if they all agreed to work 10% less hours for 10% less pay,we could have roughly 10% more teachers and we have a lot of unemployed teachers.Better still,let them have a 10% pay cut for the same hours and hire 10% extra teachers anyway.The teachers union would be up in arms despite all their "worry" about the pupil teacher ratio.
A lot of money could be saved on dole by this method, but those in secure jobs don`t like job sharing because it means less income for the reduced hours.
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I think using the example of teachers misses the point, as the 'job of work' (amount) of teaching required in the State in any given time period is to a greater or lesser degree fixed. The only 'consumer' of/driver of demand for teaching services is the State (it creates the demand in both public and private schools by virtue of its exam system), so it stands to reason that, in the case of teaching, there is indeed a 'fixed' amount of work to go around, which can be share around depending on how many teachers there are - halve the number of teachers, but you'll need to double their hours if the 'amount of teaching' done is to remain the same (btw I realise that is a crass way to look at education, just using the op's example).

The lump of labour fallacy really applies to the private sector, where productivity, demand and labour are elastic.
 
All unecessary regulation is a burden on the economy. The free market works best with little regulation. Government regulation of any type stifles innovation and economic growth.

The WTD is a joke. People should be free to work the hours they want. We need more freedom from government/european legislation.

Get rid of the c*** reems of legislation from the EU and Europe may one day become competitive again on the global stage.
 
Purple said:
There is no legal opt out for employees, the government doesn't think they have the brains to make their own decisions, so we have no choice.

The WTD is there because the French socialists had a stupid law stopping people working more than 35 hours. It was screwing up the French economy so they thought they'd screw everyone else up as well and lo and behold the EU got the working time directive. The Brits opted out and as far as I know the swath of employment protection laws they have in place have, so far, protected the poor stupid "wurkors" from the evil capitalist employers.

So in the UK if an adult wants to work hard to provide for their family they still can. Irish people, it seems, aren’t capable of such weighty decisions.
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Too right. We need less government intervention in our lives. I hate the way the Western governments are trying to intervene in our lives with stupid regulation that stifles our economies.

If you don't want to work overtime tell your employer no. People need to take control of their own lives and not try and rely on the government to do so.
 
I can`t understand why people are getting so hostile to the WTD.It is there to stop workers working excessive hours.If an employer wants more work done he can easily hire out of our 400,000+ unemployed.
In the U.K. with their opt out ,workers are frequented taken advantage of by having to do 60+ hours a week just to get a living wage....the overtime rate is usually no more than the regular rate and the long hours mean wage rates can be lowered.With the proliferation of agencies competing for employers, things such as holiday pay is not paid.The WTD is there to protect especially lower paid workers...take truck drivers...there has been some very bad accidents involving especially immigrant truck drivers here who were working huge hours and literally fell asleep at the wheel.
A lot of our high paid workers work a lot less than 48 hours a week and no one suggests they could work a few more hours to help out the economy..at the same salary of course.
Another thing is ...about the minimum wage is if this was abolished or reduced substantially it would put irish workers at a disadvantage with immigrants in the job market. For example if an employer had a job paying 5e an hour...an irish worker wouldn`t accept it, but an immigrant who couldn`t get welfare would. The welfare rates could be reduced but then the employer could reduce the pay again.
 
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