MEPs vote to end right of individuals to opt out of 48 hour week

The European parliament has voted overwhelmingly to end the possibility of individuals opting out of the maximum 48 hour week and has decided that the whole time that employees spend on call should be counted as working hours. The two key amendments to the European Union's existing working time directive fundamentally alter the proposal the EU commission had tabled last year. While critical of the opt-out because it believed it was being abused, the commission had stopped short of calling for its abolition. It had also proposed creating two types of on-call time'active and inactive'with the latter not counting towards the working week. The MEPs want to abolish that distinction between the two categories and to see the possibility to opt out scrapped within three years of the legislation coming into force. The amendments have had a mixed response from doctors. Both were welcomed by the Standing Committee of European Doctors as being in line with their organisation's policy. However, Simon Eccles, the chairman of the BMA's junior doctors committee, had a more qualified reaction. “Although the working time directive has been instrumental in bringing doctors' hours to safe levels, the BMA believes that those who have control of their working patterns should have the right to opt out,” he said. That possibility may still exist since existing legislation allows the opt-out from the 48 hour limit for “autonomous workers.” The term, however, has never been properly defined, and whether senior hospital doctors, for example, who can organise their own working hours would be considered “autonomous” has not been legally tested. Mr Eccles also warned that the European parliament's proposal to allow working hours to be averaged over a whole year, instead of four months, could be harmful to junior doctors if long hours in one job were hidden by shorter hours in another. Although the BMA is generally supportive of the move to classify on call as working time, the Permanent Working Group of European Junior Doctors pointed to a potential loophole. As currently drafted, the legislation states that “inactive parts of on-call time may be calculated in a specific manner” either by collective agreements or by national legislation. According to Dr Nina Tiainen, the president of the working group, “each country could do this differently, and in a worse case scenario inactive on-call time could be calculated as zero hours.” The British government is particularly unhappy with the proposed abolition of the opt-out. Like many of its EU partners, it also supported the division of on-call time into two separate categories. “We are disappointed the parliament did not follow the commission's sensible and balanced proposal,” said a British spokesperson. The commission and EU governments will now have to decide whether to accept or reject the parliament's amendments, which came at just one stage in the legislative process. Their first reaction could come at a meeting of national social affairs ministers on 2 and 3 June, although it is likely to be next year before a final agreement is reached.