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Atte gou old wifit me?
Page 26
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Here is CM'S chance to help us with our problems.
I have just read the most fascinating paperback. It is the Department of Transport's consolidated version of Regulation 543/69. And let me say right away that the authors of this mystery make Agatha Christie's work look like the efforts of a first-year student.
Of all the interwoven sub-plots in this classic mystery, the most subtle must surely be that surrounding the rolling week. We find that a week is -any period of seven consecutive days." But where does that leave us? We can see when it comes to weekly driving limits that we must take each particular day with the six preceding days to calculate the weekly driving. So each day ends a rolling week.
However, any particular driving day will also be aggregated with the six succeeding days to constitute another rolling week. So each day starts a rolling week.
When we add up all the other possibilities, we find that each driving day and each weekly rest period falls within seven rolling weeks. In other words, within a calendar week of seven days, seven rolling weeks will end and seven rolling weeks will commence. For the mathematically minded, within a calendar year 365 rolling weeks will commence; 359 rolling weeks will have been completed and six rolling weeks will be partly completed (or commenced — depending on which end of the year you look at).
Now please stay with me, for things can get a bit more complicated.
Mostly a driver will always be looking back over the last six days — because each day completes a rolling week. So on the first day a person starts driving employment, he will have completed a rolling week. That's a nice fast start for anyone and the question is, will he have to complete a weekly report (see later)? Of course that day also starts another rolling week and, as I said previously, that first day's work falls into seven rolling weeks.
Now we are told that the daily rest period may in some circumstances be reduced from
11 hours on two occasions in any week. Of course the lost hours must be compensated the same week. Does that mean that it must be compensated seven times because it falls within seven rolling weeks or does it mean that it must be compensated in any one of the seven rolling weeks in which the reduced daily rest period falls? Or does it mean that the compensation must come within the previous six days or can it be enjoyed within six succeeding days?
Surely, I thought, the answer must be somewhere in Regulation 543/69. So I read right through to the annex and what did I find? Under the Control Book Instructions, "Weekly Report — this report should be made out at the end of every period of one week in which one or more daily sheets have been made out.
So if every day completes a week, every daily sheet should be accompanied by a weekly report! In fact if I drive only on one day each calendar week, I will complete one daily sheet, plus a weekly report and another weekly report on each day for the next succeeding six days. Still, that's only paper, so let's get back to working conditions.
Article 12 says that a driver must have a weekly rest period of 29 hours, plus a daily rest period. I must do this every week and every day completes a rolling week, so every day's driving must be preceded by 11 hours daily rest (or by a reduced period if we can sort out where and when it can be compensated) and be followed by a weekly rest period of 40 hours.
Of course, the 40 hours can be reduced by five hours if that can be compensated in the same week (ie, before, after, once or seven times?). So even in its simplest form, it.would seem that a driver's working programme will be something like this daily rest period 1 6 hours, working/driving period nine hours, weekly rest period 35 hours. He should manage that just about twice a week. I mean, twice each calendar week. What a clever way to solve the unemployment problem.
Of course, there will be no danger of drivers exceeding the weekly duty limits, which, to confuse matters further, are calculated on a calendar week and not a rolling week.
I hope you are still with me, because we now have to look at the EEC fortnightly limits and if a week is any period of seven consecutive days, a fortnight must surely be any period of 14 consecutive days . .
Do you know where I can get a job as a car park attendant? A. M. MELID, (Address supplied).