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See The Guardian [UK]: Q&A: Working time directive (6 November 2006 11.33 GMT)
Bosses will still able to ask employees to work more than a 48-hour week under an EU agreement reached today in Luxembourg.

...

Employees have the right to:
· A maximum working week of 48 hours
· A rest period of 11 consecutive hours a day
· A rest break when the day is longer than six hours
· A minimum of one rest day per week
· The statutory right to four weeks' holiday

In addition to this:
· Night working must not average out at more than eight hours at a stretch
· Workers will be entitled to a free health check-up before being employed on night work and at regular intervals thereafter

...

The opt-out has allowed member states to put in place measures allowing individuals to agree not to be subject to the 48-hour working limit. In other words, they can work for longer if they want to. Britain was the only country at the time to take this action after the negotiations in 1993.

Other countries have since put some measures in place for specific areas of work, but Britain has made the most widespread use of it.

The individual opt-out comes with conditions: employees have to formally agree to waive their right to work a maximum of 48 hours a week, and a refusal to do so cannot entail negative consequences.

In practise, of course, few workers challenge their employers when they demand that the employee opt out...


A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds; a man of deeds and not of words is like a garden full of turds — Anonymous
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Jul 4th, 2009 at 01:09:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]
We've had so much BS with these regulations in our health care sector, it's been playing absolute hell with the "on call" system (ie doctors and nurses who are on leave but have to go to the hospital if something happens). The reason being that "on-call" leave counted as work, even if you weren't actually called to the hospital.

This is stuff the EU should stay away from in the name of subsidarity.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Sat Jul 4th, 2009 at 05:13:02 PM EST
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