———Workers and Politics———

Experience of Workers and Amendments to Legislation Exposes New Labour's Working Time Regulations

August 13, 1999

Experience of workers on Tyneside show that the government's claims to have improved the health and safety of the workers such as with the introduction of the Working Time Regulations has not only not occurred but the conditions facing the workers are deteriorating rapidly and the working week of the workers is being extended to meet the drive of the monopolies for maximum profits in the global market.

Whilst AMEC Process and Energy, Crown House Engineering, both based in Wallsend, and Ledwood Construction at North Shields were "honoured" on June 16 by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents for improving their safety record, when, for example, workers and employees of contractors at the AMEC oil rig construction sites are still forced to work long hours for 6 and seven 10 hour shifts a week or be paid off. Many of these workers are not only expected to work long hours but if they take holidays they are paid off and in any case are forced to pay each week for their own holiday pay with holiday credit reductions.

Recently, one contractor at AMEC Wallsend sent around a letter saying that "If you would like to continue to work more than 48 hours from time to time, you will need to sign the enclosed agreement (The so-called "individual choice" to opt out from the protection of the Act-ed)…… If the agreement is not signed, you will not be allowed to work more than 48 hours." They also added to the letter in relation to the right of an employee to have 4 weeks paid holiday under the regulations the paragraph in bold print. "It is your responsibility to ensure that you manage your own holiday credits to ensure that you have payment during holiday periods." The letter is in violation of the government's Working Time Regulations in that workers can work overtime providing it averages no more than 48 hours over 17 weeks. The conditions the company is imposing is that the workers must sign away their rights to get any overtime and then they must work the hours that they dictate. However, whilst the company manipulate the situation to suit their plans to exploit the workers to the maximum the workers have minimal rights. As one worker at the yard pointed out; "Three lads were paid off last week because they had families and couldn't work the seven days but the company simply writes down the reason that they were paid off because there is 'no work' for them. If they complain then they are at risk of loosing their dole and not being re-employed at another yard and the company will deny that they were paid off because they refuse to work over 48 hours." Since then six more have been paid of for the same reason.

The workers are right not to trust in the legislation of New Labour. In a Tribunal case in July a van driver won his case against a Gateshead company for being dismissed because he refused to work over 48 hours. This is only the second of two cases that have been won nationally after a year of the legislation. The tribunal awarded the maximum to the van driver but he will not get his job back and is to be paid only £12,000 in compensation inspite of the fact that he is unlikely to find another job due to a his age and a disability. It is also common knowledge that employers secretly black workers who take their former employers to tribunals.

In addition the government has just introduced into Parliament amendments to the Working Time Regulations which reverse some of the provisions of the Act only introduced last October. This announcement came in the same week that the government claimed that it was committed to "family friendly" employment. The changes have been tabled on the last day of the parliamentary session with only a short period of consultation inspite of the protests of the Health and Safety Commission, the TUC, trade unions and others. The amendment to regulation 5 removes record keeping requirements from employers where employees opt out of the limit on their working time to 48 hours. The amendment to Regulation 20 removes from the limit of and average of 48 hours a week virtually all salaried workers who "voluntarily" work unpaid outside of their normal working hours. The amendments which will pass through Parliament in October are according to the government amendments that are necessary because they are an "unnecessary burden on business."

It is reported that according to the latest figures men in Britain work longer hours than anywhere else in Europe. The Rowntree Foundation pointed out that a quarter of all fathers were working over 50 hours a week and that one in eleven were working more than 60 hours a week. As a result only a minority of fathers working more than 50 hours a week were able to participate in a family meal every day.

What this experience of the workers and the proposal to backtrack on the WTR exposes is that they cannot put their faith in the vision that Tony Blair paints of a "fair and flexible labour market underpinned by minimum standards." The situation they face reveals that the "family friendly" polices of New Labour embodied in the health and safety and other legislation has the aim of intensifying the exploitation of all types of workers and increasing their working day and working week still further. It exposes the argument of those that argue that a "fair deal" for workers can be achieved whereby allegedly the interests of the workers to have a normal working week can be harmonised with the interests of big business to maximise profits and increase productivity. Such a "fair deal" means that legislation such as the WTR prioritise not placing "burdens on business". Such legislation provides a shorter working week when it suits big business in their drive for maximum profits and a way to extend the hours of work when a longer working week satisfies this aim. In other words, such legislation provides privileges when it suits big business and not universal rights which are applicable to all human beings and which are guaranteed.

The working class movement for over 200 years has fought many heroic battles to establish a normal working week and an 8 hour day. Fighting against the odds and under the most difficult conditions is no strange situation for workers on Tyneside whose fathers and grandfathers and many of them first hand went throught the struggles in the former shipyards and coal mines in this struggle. This was one of the most important political battles that the workers led and a positive achievement for all in society. Today the workers can no longer rely on a Labour government to defend such a basic achievement as the normal working week and whose agenda of "fair and flexible labour market underpinned by minimum standards" is a betrayal of all previous civilised values that the working class and people fought for and a restoration of 19th century conditions.

Today, again many workers, such as workers on Tyneside, are risking their livelihoods to resist the imposition of such a long working week. The issue once again is the workers turning the battles that they are waging into a political struggle, which is to say that they must engage in the struggle in defence of their own class interests. It is the workers who must come to the forefront on all the issues in society and on all these issues proclaim that they have rights and are not going to compromise in asserting these rights. Today, workers should reject the agenda of New Labour and all the political parties of the rich as well as the TUC leaders that call on them to enter into partnership with their employers. The fight of the workers is to set their own agenda. What kind of society will it be where the workers are empowered to set their own agenda? What kind of society will it be when they decide on the whole direction for the economy and within that decide what is a normal working week, stake their claims, get scientific research done on what is the optimum working week and working day under given conditions? It will not be a society where the workers remain wage slaves, where they get behind those that hire and fire them and say, fine, we are going to be your partner and enrich you, and you tell us what the agenda should be and we will be flexible, work longer hours here and be idle there, while the national economy goes to hell. Workers should start right now to organise, to write about and engage and disseminate to their fellow workers those politics that assert their rights and elaborates what these rights are in the modern conditions. This is the conclusion from the attempts of the capitalists to impose longer hours, and every other trick in the book to get the workers to give up their rights and their interests. It is this which will give a modern profile to socialism and place the working class centre stage in the political life of the country.

Workers and Politics Index