MEPs vote to scrap UK's working time opt-out

The European Parliament has voted today to scrap a provision allowing UK workers to opt out of the EU's 48-hour maximum working week.

MEPs voted 378 to 262 to phase out the individual opt-out of the Working Time Directive over a three-year period in an effort to improve health and safety for all workers in the EU.

Several countries have the right to opt-out but UK firms use it the most.

British business leaders were quick to denounce the vote and threw blame at the Labour Party, many of whose MEPs opposed the government's line and sided with Liberals, Socialists, Communists and Greens in the full parliamentary vote.

"Labour MEPs have sold British business down the drain," said Nick Goulding, chief executive of the Forum of Private Business. "They have rejected sensible and reasoned government policy.

"In the real world, it is necessary for employees to put in long working weeks for peak periods of demand, large orders or deadlines," he added. "This is not draconian or unreasonable, but pragmatic and practical."

Carol Undy, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) called today's vote a "serious threat" to the flexibility of the UK work force and the competitiveness of the economy.

Unions and employee organisations, however, lauded the vote.

"Today's employer rhetoric about choice fails to convince," said Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress. "UK employers have had nearly a decade to implement a system free of abuse that gave staff a genuinely free choice."

Barber said that research shows less than half of the UK workforce is aware it has a right under EU law not to work more than 48 hours a week. Two out of three people who work more than 48 hours have not been asked to sign an individual opt-out, he said.

The percentage of British workers working long hours is larger than in any of the EU 15 states, and the UK's average hours are the second highest, according to the independent employment researchers The Work Foundation.

Removing the opt-out clause will still leave flexibility for employers, the organisation said, as the vote accommodates the EU Social Affairs Committee's recommendation that the 48-hour weekly limit be an average calculated over the course of the year, with slow periods off-setting busy periods.

The vote next moves to the Council of Ministers. The Labour government is expected to form a coalition with Germany, France, Luxembourg and other nations which still use the opt-out clause in certain industrial sectors.