mr president the council common position is of course not ideal but i am well aware that it has taken many years of negotiations by member states to actually get this far
most of us have also been working on this for a number of years
i have always supported the retention of the opt-out but i wanted it tightened up so that it would be truly voluntary
i am pleased that the opt-out now within the common position cannot be signed at the same time as the contract and that you can opt out of the opt-out at any time
this is a far more transparent way of protecting workers rights than using a definition of autonomous worker that is so loose it could apply to anyone as it does in many member states or the use of multiple contracts whereby an employer can employ the same employee on one two or even three contracts something which is used in some other member states
if there is an abuse of the opt-out by the employer then the worker can take them to an employment tribunal
my fear is that if we lose the opt-out we will force more people into the grey economy and then they will not be covered by health and safety legislation in particular the dangerous machinery directive
all legal workers are covered by these directives whether they opt in or opt out of the working time directive
in these difficult economic times it is very important that workers are able to earn overtime if they want to and that employers also have flexibility
i have more difficulty with regard to on-call time not being considered as working time in the common position
that is why i tabled my amendment in the employment and social affairs committee to say that on-call time should be classed as working time
unfortunately i did not get the support from the socialist or the epp groups for my amendment
what we have now in the cercas report is that on-call time should be classed as working time but that collective agreements or national law are allowed to rule otherwise
this to my mind is not a major change from what is already in the council common position just a slight difference of emphasis
i did not retable my amendment because i knew that the socialist and epp groups would not vote for it
i suspect however that we might have to go to conciliation but i also suspect that the council will not move
if there is no agreement then i hope the council will think again and that the health sector will be dealt with separately something which i have long called for
to my mind the revision of this directive was only really necessary to deal with the simap and jaeger judgments by the european courts and that is all that we should have looked at
