10.06.2005

CPA to maintain working time lobby

Last week European Union employment ministers met to discuss reform of the Working Time directive. The UK, supported by some other countries, successfully blocked a proposal to end the rights of EU member countries to opt-out from the directive which essentially limits the working week to 48 hours.

The UK government remains committed to preserving the opt-out in order to maintain a flexible labour market, but the CPA fears that pressure from the rest of the European Union may eventually force it to give ground.

“We fully expect the opt-out to be under threat again next year. Our campaigning must continue as vigorously as ever.” Said Colin Wood, chief executive of the UK's Construction Plant-hire Association (CPA).

“We have seen our government give way before on one issue in order to horse trade over something that it considers a higher priority,” continued Wood. “It is crucial that the Working Time Directive opt-out stays in place.”

The CPA has campaigned to save the opt-out on the grounds that its removal would add massive cost and bureaucracy to the construction and plant hire industry. This week Wood added a new warning: “If the opt-out goes, the UK will face a massive shortage of plant operators, leaving expensive machinery lying idle half the week.”

“Operated plant that is driven to a different site each day, such as mobile cranes or concrete pumps, routinely work a 12 hour day - eight hours on site and two hours each way travelling from the depot to site and back again. Other plant operators also put in long hours when construction projects are up against tight deadlines.

“Many operators routinely work 60 hours a week or more and earn good overtime. If we lose the opt-out, operators will be restricted to working 48 hours a week on average.”
“This means that we will need thousands more operators to make up the shortfall, and there is already a shortage of skilled, experienced operators out there, continued Wood

“Removing the opt-out would effectively mean a 20% reduction in the number of hours that operators would be able to put in. If you do the maths, that means we would need 25% more operators to get the same amount of work done.

Martin Ainscough, who heads the UK’s biggest mobile crane hirer, Ainscough Crane Hire and chairs the CPA’s Crane Interest Group, said that removing the opt-out would be “an operational nightmare”.

“Clients want us to start work on site at 8am and keep us there until at least 4.30pm or 5pm. including travelling from the depot to the site and back, my drivers regularly work 12 hours a day, and 30% of our cranes work at weekends as well. If the European Parliament gets its way, they could only work four days a week. I would need hundreds more operators to keep the cranes working.” Continued Ainscough.

Trevor Jepson, managing director of City Lifting, expressed concern about safety. “You can’t just create operators overnight. But even if we could suddenly find and train all the extra operators we need, there are going to be a lot of inexperienced crane drivers out there. There’s a significant safety issue here.”


The European Working Time Directive came into force in 1998 and limits most workers to a working week of 48 hours, averaged out over the course of 17 weeks, or over a year where a collective labour agreement is force. The UK, however, negotiated an opt-out, giving workers the right to put in more hours if they want.