by Ross Clark - Wednesday, 5th September 2007 -

The most memorable part about my year working as a trainee engineer for British Rail in the mid 1980s was the month I had off.

I took a train to Venice, then travelled through Yugoslavia and meandered back up through Germany and France – and all because I had managed to accumulate 28 days’ worth of time off in lieu.

It wasn’t hard for a British Rail worker to do this: you merely had to make sure that when you were travelling on business you caught a train back to your “home” station which did not arrive until at least a minute after the magic deadline of 6pm, whereupon you earned valuable hours off in lieu.

I was reminded of this scam when I read the other week that station supervisors on the London Underground have just been awarded 52 days’ worth of holiday a year – on top of weekends.

I am sure, as the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union argued in order to win the new deal from Ken Livingstone, that Underground station supervisors do work in unpleasant conditions.

But they are not half as unpleasant, I bet, as suffered by the poor blighters who have to get on the trains – ie you and me trying to get to work.

Irritating as it is for taxpayers to have to fund institutional sloth on the tube, it is even worse that the government, at the behest of the European Union, is trying to force a short hours culture on all of us.

Since the EU’s working time directive was incorporated into British law in 1998, British workers have been forbidden from working an average of more than 48 hours a week unless they sign individual “opt-out” agreements with their employers.

There is little evidence that large numbers of employees still feel they are working for too long: in spite of encouraging people to come forward if they feel pressurised into working long hours, the Health and Safety Executive has received a a mere 553 complaints across the country over the past six years.

But of course, that is not enough for bureaucrats at the European Commission, who in between their own generous holidays and lunch breaks have somehow managed to find the time to bully Britain into reducing working hours still further.

The commission has told Britain that it has four options. It can:

- keep the current system of opt-outs from the 48 hour working week but under tighter conditions.
- It can make opt-outs only legal where they have been agreed by trade unions.
- It can allow individuals to continue to make opt-out agreements, but only in companies where there is no effective trade union representation.
- It can phase out opt-outs altogether and prevent any employee working more than 48 hours a week.

Some choice.

As a result of the European Commission’s demands, the government is trying to go for option one.

Employees will be allowed to continue to agree to work longer than 48 hours a week, but at the cost of placing more red tape upon their employers.

A DTI discussion document suggests a new law compelling companies to keep detailed records of how long each employee has worked each week and to conduct regular “health assessments” on employees working more than 48 hours a week.

Are we really all so delicate that we need protecting from the strains of work?

There would still be someone painting the roof of the Sistine Chapel now if Michelangelo had been obliged to keep EU–approved hours. He didn’t even bother breaking for meals, but still managed to live to the age of 89.

There is, however, an ulterior motive for trying to force us all to work less.

According to the theories of unreconstructed Euro socialists, shorter hours for all mean more jobs and less unemployment – the idea being that work is some kind of finite resource which needs to be distributed wisely.

It is, of course, nonsense: Britain, which works some of the longest hours in Europe, has the lowest unemployment, and France, where workers are not supposed to exceed 35 hours a week, is an unemployment nightmare.

In fact if you wanted to lay one reason behind Europe’s economic stagnation, it would be this. Short hours are being forced upon us against our wishes and against economic common sense.