Victory for the anti-EU campaign: UK to relax working time directive
A victory for the anti-EU campaign; the Guardian reports:
“Britain looks set to be able to relax the EU’s controversial working time directive after David Cameron agreed a framework for negotiations with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in response to the eurozone crisis.
“The UK will sign up to a revision of the Lisbon treaty – aimed at underpinning tough new fiscal rules for the eurozone – in exchange for an undertaking from Berlin that it will allow for an examination of the impact of the directive, which imposes a 48-hour (maximum – JD) week on workers across the EU.
“The tentative deal, agreed over lunch in Berlin on Friday, may allow the prime minister to sell the idea of an EU treaty change to his Conservative backbenchers on the grounds that he will be repatriating social powers to Britain.”
Keep up the good work, chaps! Forward to the abolition of all foreign-imposed employment legislation!
SteveH said,
November 21, 2011 at 9:28 pm
I am confused, this is pro EU Cameron agreeing something with Pro EU Merkel. Where do the anti EU forces come into this?
In other news, which should please this site. Nuclear armed Britain is imposing sanctions on Iran for erm trying to obtain a nuclear weapon. And the sanctions will fall on Iranian banks who apparently have been up to no good. Whereas our banks……..
Robin Carmody said,
November 21, 2011 at 10:01 pm
Two wrongs, Steve. Two wrongs.
The egregious behaviour of banks in the Western world does not, in itself, justify the Iranian state and its repression of workers and trade unionists, any more than it justified the Soviet state. This sort of rhetoric justifies any amount of cynical anti-politics, on a level with the very worst Tory backbenchers.
You are implicitly supporting a repressive ruling class simply for not being “our” repressive ruling class – and if that’s the level someone’s politics have been reduced to, they might as well give up. And as for thinking Cameron isn’t Europhobic *enough* … UKIP are that way.
representingthemambo said,
November 22, 2011 at 12:34 pm
Hi SteveH
I think the point of the article is that the agenda of most of the people arguing against the EU in Britain is to roll back the rights and protections of workers.
This is the ‘repatriation of powers’ back to Britain that some on the left seem to think represents some kind of progress.
The anti-EU agenda is the agenda of the right, and fools who think it can be manipulated into something progressive (escaping the EU ‘bosses club’) and establishing an independent socialist Britain. It is naïve in the extreme.
Robin Carmody said,
November 22, 2011 at 6:45 pm
Exactly.
Most of the Tory Europhobes don’t even want an independent Britain (whatever that even means). They want a United States of the Anglosphere, in which Britain would have far less sovereignty than it has today.
Roger said,
November 22, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Playing avocatus diaboli, doesn’t this in fact prove that the EU run as it is by bourgeois parties will do nothing whatsoever to defend workers rights?
Those rights were never won by mass action – they were granted piecemeal in the decades when the European ruling class were sufficiently frightened of The Warsaw Pact armies on their borders and of the communist and socialist parties and unions within to offer meaningful concessions to us and codified at a European level in 1961.
They survived when the social chapters were revised in 1996 and 1999 because the capitalist class needed to offer the then dominant Third Way social-democrats something in exchange for the great wave of globalisation, privatisation and de-regulation they demanded from them
Now they have literally nothing to fear from the left even these concessions are being withdrawn and the EU finally exposed as what it always was – just another special committee of the ruling class.
charliethechulo said,
November 23, 2011 at 12:19 am
“just another special committee of the ruling class”: yes, but a *special* special committee – ie something you’d oppose especially, over and above general opposition to capitalism in all its forms? Surely the internationalism of capitalism is something that we actaually support and take as a building block for socialism?
martin ohr said,
November 23, 2011 at 11:08 am
actually the working hours directive was won in a peculiar way that only a bosses europe could possibly deliver.
(Mainly) German capitalists argued that there was an unfair playing field for companies because of the employment legislation which should be extended to competitor countries in the EU.
The working hours directive is well worth defending, as it gives workers a basic protection against being worked to death, and it makes it hard to enforce overtime and wreck our quality of life.
There are rumblings that aspects of on-call stuff will be taken in or out already. My understanding is that on-call doesn’t count as work, but once you are called-up/called-out then working hours kicks in. Of course employers could fix the issues with this themselves by running out of hours shifts rather than relying on on-call etc.
Steveh said,
November 23, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Robin,
re your first comment,
It is a trait of mine to highlight the hypocrisy of my ruling class. In the spirit of Marx when he attacked the Duchess of Sutherland’s anti slavery stance.
Chuchutrain,
to answer your question, no with fucking knobs on.com
Robin Carmody said,
November 23, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Do you think the hypocrisy of the British ruling class justifies the repressive nature of the Iranian state?
(Although I don’t know why I’m wasting time on a Little Englander like you, sometimes.)
charliethechulo said,
November 23, 2011 at 7:44 pm
“No with fucking knobs on.”
I presume that’s in response to my proposition that the internationalism of capitalism is one of the building blocks of socialism. If so, then SteveH clearly hasn’t got the most elementary grasp of Marxism. Try reading The Communist Manifesto, where Marx makes precisely thism pint over and over again, in such plain terms that one would have thouight even a knuckle-head like MrH would understand. Eg: “The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitatted means of communication, draws all , even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation” etc, etc, etc.