48 hours is for managers too
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• by Karen Miles Transport managers are being urged to take on their bosses if they are being forced to work longer than 48 hours a week.
Fresh from its success in dealing with an NHS trust, the managers union, the MSF, is calling on all UK managers, including transport and warehousing managers and supervisors, to challenge their superiors about long hours.
Since last October office and depot staff have been among those protected by the General Working Time Directive from Brussels, which says that workers cannot be forced to work more than 48 hours a week. Employees covered by this directive can agree to work longer but cannot be ordered to do so.
So far there have been no known cases of non-driving staff threatening their bosses with legal action over long hours.
The MSF wants managers whose bosses refuse to let them work less than 48 hours to contact their unions and the Health and Safety Executive to try to enforce the law. If that fails cases could go to the High Court; but employers are not bound to pay higher hourly wages.
We won't rest until we've brought fair hours to the whole population," says an MSF spokesman. "No-one will be left out."
The call for action follows an MSFbrokered agreement last month with a north-east NHS trust, which ended the THE General Working Time Directive for depot and office-bound transport workers enforces:
A 48-hour average weekly working limit with minimum daily rest of 11 consecutive hours, weekly rest of 24 hours and daily 20-minute breaks when the shift is more than six hours. Night shifts are limited to eight hours: *A minimum of three weeks' paid leave, rising to four weeks from November;
The rights of employees to opt out.
The law does not cover self-employed workers.
90-hour weeks worked by some hospital technicians.
The European Commission has drawn up similar working time proposals for Europe's 5.6 million truck drivers, but they are not likely to become law for at least another two years. They were expected to be tougher than the general directive, but the UK Government has just made it clear that it wants to give the voluntary opt-out to all drivers—which would allow self-employed drivers to opt out too, undermining the whole viability of the proposals (CM 6-12 May).