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Working Time Directive: working limits for doctors in training
The Amsterdam Treaty increased the European Parliament's input into EU legislation on health and safety at work. The Social Agreement was incorporated into the Treaty, which means that directives laying down minimum standards can now be adopted by qualified majority and codecision with the European Parliament not only on health and safety at work, but also in the broader area of 'working conditions'. The European Parliament has always insisted on optimal protection for workers' health and safety and has expressed the view in several resolutions that policy should not be confined to the health and safety of workers in a restrictive sense but should embrace all aspects directly or indirectly affecting the physical or mental well-being of workers. A review of the directives on the working environmentshowed that the European Parliament has had a significant influence on these directives aimed at better protection for workers. Source: European Parliament Fact Sheets: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/default_en.htm
On August 1st, 2004, new rules on working time for doctors in training came into force [ full title ]. The Directive was adopted by the European Parliament and EU Ministers in August 2000 to update the overall Working Time Directive (1993).
The original Working Time Directive was adopted by the Council on 23 November 1993 under the cooperation procedure. The Directive laid down minimum safety and health requirements for the organization of working time. It concerned minimum periods of daily rest, weekly rest and annual leave, breaks and maximum weekly working time; and certain aspects of night work, shift work and patterns of work. It applied to all sectors of activity, both public and private, with the exception of air, rail, road, sea, inland waterway and lake transport, sea fishing, other work at sea and the activities of doctors in training. The Directive includes requirements for:
The general Working Time Directive did not come into force in the UK until 1998 and included an individual opt-out from the 48-hour working week. This is currently under review by the European Commission and has been the subject of recent discussion in the European Parliament. In Focus will return to this in the autumn. The June 2000 Directive adopted by the European Parliament and the Council extended the scope of the Working Time Directive to new categories of workers, namely junior doctors, oil platform workers and share fishermen. Other categories excluded from the 1993 Directive, such as train crews and lorry drivers, are covered by separate legislation - this will also be covered by In Focus later in the year.
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European Parliament impact and debates The revision of the Working Time Directive only came about after a difficult negotiation between EU Ministers and the European Parliament, requiring three readings and a full conciliation committee in the codecision procedure. The proposals were steered through Parliament by Miet SMET MEP (EPP, Belgium). This was the first major item in the social policy field to be decided by conciliation. The two sides finally reached agreement on the most difficult issue, namely the working hours of doctors in training, so that junior doctors would have an average 48-hour working week, after 9 years. Originally Council suggested 13 and Parliament 4 years. The Conciliation Committee acknowledged that for some Member States, 9 years could be too short to permit the necessary adjustments to the training systems and human resource management of their health care services. Therefore, in exceptional circumstances, a Member State may, under a stringent procedure,obtain an extension of up to 2 years. In case of special difficulties and after going through the same procedure, a Member State may have up to one more year before moving to the 48 working hour regime. During such additional periods, the number of average weekly working hours may not exceed 52. Below are excerpts of the parliamentary debate on 16 May 2000, and a link to the full transcript.
Philip Bushill-Matthews MEP (Conservative, West Midlands) spoke:- As British Conservatives, we have always opposed the Working Time Directive. The idea that politicians in Brussels or Strasbourg should determine how many hours different people work across Europe is, we believe, fundamentally daft. To extend it to groups such as offshore oil workers and sea fishermen is particularly so. However, because of the special issue of over-worked junior doctors in the UK, as Conservative MEPs we voted last November to extend the directive to them. We very much hoped that this would pressure national governments – especially our own – to produce a better deal. Certainly Parliament as a whole was of similar mind, hence the Conciliation Committee on which I was privileged to serve. Having only got what we consider minor concessions, we can confirm that, as British Conservatives, we neither support the Working Time Directive nor its extension to any other grouping. We still support a better deal for junior doctors; we will still continue to pressure our own government to provide it, but a directive from the European Parliament is clearly not the right way to secure it.
Stephen Hughes MEP (Labour, North East) first addressed first the issues of oil platform workers and sea-fishermen (for his full speech see the link to the debate below). He then said:- The third area I want to concentrate on - and it is what other speakers have mentioned - relates to junior doctors. Looking at this part of the agreement without detailed knowledge of the negotiations that went into it, it must seem like a very strange animal. A four-year transposition period - five years transition and then the possibility of extra time beyond that. But of course that was to take account of the special difficulties facing one or two Member States. I would repeat what other speakers have said: for us the period in question is nine years. That will be the normal period within which Member States will be expected to comply with the requirements of this directive in relation to junior doctors. That is why the procedure to go beyond that into what we might term extra time is so open - in a way humiliating for any government that attempts to take that step. I think that in fact we will see all Member States complying with that section of the directive relating to junior doctors within that nine-year time frame. I am confident, speaking today, that will be the case. A further important point might have been missed. The provisions relating to nine years for junior doctors only relate to the average working week. The other provisions of the directive relating to daily and weekly rest breaks, annual leave and nightwork will, of course, apply to junior doctors after a three-year transposition period just as they do for all other workers. Those parts of the directive can, of course, be subject to derogation but only by collective agreement so those elements will apply to junior doctors. The sections dealing with annual leave cannot be negotiated away and it is important to bear that in mind: i.e. the nine years for junior doctors applies only to working time - average weekly working time - and the other provisions of the directive apply after three years.
Liz Lynne MEP (Liberal Democrat, West Midlands) spoke:- I would like to talk specifically about junior doctors. I am very pleased that they are going to be brought in line with the working time directive. There are 270 000 junior doctors across the EU who will be affected by this. 50.1% in my constituency work over 72 hours a week as do 10 000 in the UK as a whole. You can see from those figures that it is extremely important that all Member States actually meet those objectives and I mean the nine-year objective. The present situation is not good for patients or doctors alike – they have our life in their hands. We would not want to be treated by a drunken doctor and I do not believe that we should be treated by an over-tired doctor. Evidence proves that somebody who is impaired by tiredness is impaired in the same way as drunkenness. The British Medical Association was saying that 15% of junior doctors were leaving the profession citing stress, overwork and length of hours. A lot of those were going to Australia and New Zealand where the working practices were better. We have to stop that drain. The nine-year timetable, of course, is an improvement on what the Council of Ministers wanted. It is made up of four years' implementation and five years to bring down the working time from 58 to 48 hours. It is far better than what the Council wanted which was the 13-year period. I, of course, would have preferred a shorter time. As I have said before, our life is in their hands and it is important that we get this right. The UK Government, of course, was part of the problem. They maintain that they cannot achieve the reduction in this timescale. I believe that they are wrong and that is why we have the extension for two years and also the extension after that for one year. But as everyone else has said, it has to be in exceptional circumstances. There must be rigorous notification and justification procedures and I hope that the British Government, and other Member State governments who feel that they can delay further by seeking two years and then another will feel so embarrassed that they will not seek to do so and meet the goal in nine years. It is not twelve years – it is nine years and we must state that very, very clearly. It is long enough – I would have liked it to have been shorter, but let us hope the governments, and the British Government in particular, adhere to that.
Jean Lambert MEP (Greens, London) said:- Mr President, I must apologise for this appearing to be a British show at this moment. I assure you that it does change with the next speaker. I have been deeply concerned at some of the arguments put forward by certain governments which have said that other aspects of health provision could be threatened if the reduction of working time for this group was brought in more quickly. I cannot understand why it is less important for these workers to have reasonable working conditions and hours than any other group of health workers. I want to know whether junior doctors in some countries are some sort of superhuman who can do without adequate rest and who will not harm their own health or that of their patients in the process. The mother of one such trainee doctor said to me recently that she had been writing to the British Prime Minister and his wife, Tony and Cherie, to ask if they would be happy if their new baby were to be delivered by a tired, stressed-out doctor in a semi-drunken condition as that described by Mrs Lynne. I consider that would be a real health and safety issue requiring rapid action. As we have all said, we must be clear that nine years has to be seen as an absolute limit, that anything more is an aberration. Any country not managing that should not be surprised if they find their staff moving elsewhere, to countries which have managed to implement more modern working conditions. The stepped approach which has been brought in must not be used to simply give a redefinition of working time such as removing meal breaks or time spent on call but not actually treating patients. That would simply be following the bad practices recently tried out by certain burger chains. However, at least some of those chains pay their part-time 17-year-old staff more per hour than some junior doctors get in overtime payment.
The last British speaker in this debate was Ian Hudghton MEP (SNP, Scotland):- Like my colleague, Mrs Lambert, I am concerned that this compromise has not gone quite far enough in relation to doctors' hours. There would remain though some workers in some working places where practical issues do not readily lend themselves to the implementation of this type of directive. Mr Hudghton devoted the remainder of his speech to the issue of sea-fishermen's hours.
Transcription of the full debate: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/omk/omnsapir.so/debatsL5?FILE=20000516EN&LANGUE=EN&LEVEL=TOC2&CHAP=7 [ top ]
DTI, the Department for Trade and Industry, are in charge of the overall Working time Directive in the UK. A summary of Working Time Regulations is available on their website at http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/work_time_regs/wtr2.htm The Department of Health is responsible for overseeing the rules on junior doctors' working hours. They have summarised the regulations coming in in August 2004 on their website at http://www.dh.go.uk The Department of Health has also published guidelines for the implementation of the new rules. [ top ]
- The European Court of Justice made a significant ruling on the definition of on-call time for doctors as part of working time
- Directive 2003/88/EC concerning certain aspects of the organisation of working time.
- Working time in road transport.
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Full title of Directive / Decision, reference of publication in the Official Journal, link to the texts. Directive 2000/34/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 June 2000 amending Council Directive 93/104/EC concerning certain aspects of the organisation of working time to cover sectors and activities excluded from that Directive. Official Journal L 195 , 01/08/2000 P. 0041 - 0045 Council Directive 93/104/EC of 23 November 1993 concerning certain aspects of the organization of working time
[ top ] (Online July 22nd, 2004 - part updated June 28th, 2006) | |||||||
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