There is a great deal on Europe in the agreement reached by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, suggesting that Europe still has the power to work a toxic effect on the Tories. And what the coalition agreement says is pretty much a Conservative walkover. Joining the Euro in this Parliament is ruled out in the document not once, but twice. And most of the rest is about refusing to let more powers be transferred to Europe, although there is no reference to repatriation of powers, which may be the one bit of ‘old liberalism’ in the Europe section.

But there is a bizarre commitment to limit the application of the Working Time Directive in the UK, which is presumably mere window dressing – any reduction in what we have now (which is no more than the Directive demands) would almost certainly leave the Government open to infraction proceedings for failing to implement the Directive sufficiently. The only provision that exceeds the irreducible legal minimum is Labour’s extension of annual leave from the 4 weeks in the Directive to 5.6 weeks so that anyone who has to work bank holidays can take other days off in lieu. It would be illiberal in the extreme (and very unpopular with ordinary people) to take that extra annual leave away – so is that really what they mean?

The commitment to support the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference is welcome, but again, no surprise – and the decision to replace Trident with a value-for-money nuclear alternative doesn’t suggest that the swords will be beaten into ploughshares any time soon!

And in foreign affairs terms, that’s about it. Nothing about the UN, flashpoints like Afghanistan or Pakistan, the Commonwealth or any of the other work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The document is simply silent on a vast swathe of what Government does!

On international development, the only commitment is to increase the aid budget to 0.7% of GNI, which is welcome, but no more than what all three parties promised in their manifestoes. There’s no commitment to legislate for it, as they also all promised, and nothing else on international development. Along with the delay in announcing a Secretary of State (the only Cabinet member on the new National Security Council not to be announced before it met for the first time today), this doesn’t suggest that international development will be a big issue for the coalition.

Meanwhile Robin Hood Tax supporters will be keen to make the most of the commitment to a banking  levy, but the scale of the resources it will raise is nowhere near what a Financial Transactions Tax would raise – so the question must still be: where is the money (eg for combating climate change, and poverty home and abroad) going to come from?

On immigration, it is deeply disappointing that the Liberal Democrats have let the Conservatives steamroll over their more ‘liberal’ approach. But it means the coalition will be on a collision course with business over the cap on non-EU migration, and possibly with reality about the so-called illegal immigrants who were being promised an amnesty by the Liberal Democrats (although in practice it’s likely the coalition will continue with the Labour Government line – whilst saying there is no amnesty, in practice not taking the incredibly costly steps needed to identify, locate and deport).

Today the Young Foundation publishes a major new study looking at people’s needs in Britain. Sinking and swimming: understanding Britain’s unmet needs is based on new analysis of statistical data, case studies, surveys and hundreds of conversations with people across the country. It shows where the most acute needs are and how they inter-relate.  It looks at why some people can cope with shocks and setbacks and others can’t.  And it draws out the implications for policy, philanthropy and public action.

The study looked at the material needs that are still going unmet (jobs, homes, wealth etc.) and the emerging and increasingly significant psychosocial needs (happiness, self esteem, resilience etc.) experienced by many around the country. In addition to the groups who are particularly affected by pressing need and – in many cases – multiple need, we also focused on a relatively under-researched group, whose needs most people are generally unaware of. We decided to look at needs at night.

This is an area on which there was little data but where there might be significant need. We chose to do this by following a range of different night workers as they worked their shifts, going where they went, seeing what they saw and asking questions as we went along. This approach allowed us not only to look at those needs that are more acute at night, but also at the needs of the night workers themselves.

The majority of our service infrastructure is designed for use in the daytime. However, particular problems (isolation, vulnerability, violence) appear more common or regularly surface at night. Those services that do operate at night are ill equipped to adequately meet these needs, resulting in a number of different people falling between the gaps or being marginalised.

When it comes to the needs of those working at night, it is clear that night shift work is an important part of the modern economy. It is likely to continue to grow in the foreseeable future – especially within the service sector. However, little attention has been paid to those working at night in terms of who they are and whether their needs differ from the daytime workforce. We found that those who work at night have significant unmet needs that go unnoticed and unreported.

A growing volume of medical research is highlighting the serious health implications of working night shifts and, as our research shows, many of the medical dangers are being amplified by the unhealthy lifestyle choices being made by – or forced upon – the night workers. There is a pressing need for raising awareness of the risks of night working, among workers and those responsible for managing their shift patterns and working environments. The trade unions and Health and Safety Executive can play a significant role in this education, pressuring for new legislation and enforcing existing regulations. More needs to be done.

With the majority of night workers in the UK employed in the public sector, the government needs to take notice of the risks these people are being exposed to. In 2009, after studying research by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the Danish government began paying compensation payments to women in professions such as nursing who developed breast cancer after working regular night shifts. As one commentator put it, night working has the potential to be the “next asbestos”, raising the possibilities of widespread legal action and large compensation payouts.

We have now truly bid farewell to summertime. The clocks have changed, the nights are drawing in and the leaves are starting to fall. Wouldn’t it be great if we had another bank holiday today to cheer us all up?

The TUC has joined together with the main voluntary organisations to call for a new bank holiday called ‘Community Day’, on the last Monday in October (i.e. it would be today if we had it this year) to celebrate volunteering and encourage people to take part in community events.

We think the new holiday should be introduced in 2012 to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the London Olympics and Paralympics with a fanfare to seal a triumphant year for volunteers across the UK. Here’s a joint letter we’ve sent to the press:

Monday (26^th October) marks the halfway point between the August and Christmas bank holidays. We would like this four month gap to be broken with a new Community Day bank holiday in late October.

Over the last two years the recession has hit communities across the UK. When times are tough people look to friends, families and their local community for support.

Community spirit is a long standing and unsung British tradition. Millions of people across the UK volunteer and take part in community activities every week. Surveys show that volunteering contributes significantly to the UK economy, boosts people’s wellbeing, prevents isolation and makes them happy too.

We believe these efforts should be recognised, encouraged and celebrated. 2012 marks the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the London Olympics and Paralympics – events only possible thanks to volunteers. This would be the perfect year to introduce a new Community Day bank holiday.

Yours,

Brendan Barber, TUC General Secretary
Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, Executive Director, Community Service Volunteers
Kevin Curley, Chief Executive, National Association for Voluntary and Community Action
Justin Davis Smith, Chief Executive, Volunteering England
Stuart Etherington, Chief Executive, The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)

The TUC’s Brendan Barber said:

“Communities across the UK have been hit hard by the recession. When times are tough, people look to their friends, family and local communities for support. Millions of people support their local communities every week in some way or other and this work should be properly recognised and encouraged.

“With the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics to look forward to, 2012 is set to be a vintage year for volunteering. A new Community Day bank holiday would be the perfect way to celebrate the nation’s achievements and encourage more people to volunteer.”

Dame Elisabeth Hoodless of UK volunteering charity CSV said:

“Volunteers raise reading levels, help patients to eat, tackle child abuse by supporting families and reduce levels of crime. We know that two thirds of the thousands of people who volunteer every October for Make a Difference Day have never volunteered before and that two thirds of those who try it out go on to volunteer again. It’s clear there is untapped energy out there.”

“Eleven million people tell researchers they would volunteer if somebody asked them.  A Community Day bank holiday would help to attract even more people to give time to benefit others.”

The Irish referendum result couldn’t have been timed better to re-open Conservative wounds over Europe, just as their final conference before the election opened. Trade unions are, of course, principally concerned about Conservative policy on European social issues – workers; rights, employment policy, equality, pensions and so on. And the Conservative policy on this seems to be evolving, but it isn’t becoming clearer.

David Cameron knows only too well that Europe pulled the last Conservative government apart – and it wasn’t so much the battle between Europhiles and Eurosceptics (which would have been a walkover for the latter) as between a Government that had to function as an EU Member State and an internal opposition that didn’t care about that.

In opposition, therefore, it’s not surprising that the sceptics have the upper hand. But Cameron needs a way of managing the transition from anti-European insurgency into a Government that can make agreements with other EU Member States.

On employment rights, the Conservative position has changed. They are no longer committed to opting out of the Social Chapter (which wouldn’t really have been possible given the new legal structures since 1997). Instead they favour ‘repatriating’ powers over ‘employment and social affairs’ (and also home affairs – although on a range of issues such as immigration, that’s effectively where the UK is at the moment: the Government has to opt in to any specific EU measure, and usually doesn’t).

It’s not clear whether the Conservatives mean that they want to be able to opt out of existing employment and social measures such as rights to paid holidays, health and safety legislation, equal rights for part-time workers and so on, or only from future employment and social legislation. If so, they would have to completely re-write UK health and safety law, as it’s almost all now based on EU directives (most of which Mrs Thatcher accepted and implemented without demur to demonstrate what a ‘good European’ she was.) And if that is the case, then it’s a legitimate question to ask which of these rights the Conservatives would want to tinker with.

If, on the other hand, the Conservatives only want to apply the repatriation of powers to future employment and social legislation, the Conservatives will need to argue what it is about past legislation that is so bad that they don’t want to go through the same process on future issues. The EU process, for example, gives a formal voice to the social partners, for example, and also has to go through a Parliament that – unlike Westminster – actually demonstrates independence in its legislative activities rather than simply following party whips. They would also need to explain how their position differs from the current Labour policy of resisting every new employment right that is proposed.

And finally, the Conservatives need to explain how they would persuade the other 26 Member States to allow them to change the rules of the EU in this way. At the weekend, Cameron seemed to be threatening to call a UK referendum unless he got his way, which would be a high risk strategy potentially opening up the course to leaving the UK. A negotiating strategy, on the other hand, would leave a Cameron Government having to offer reciprocal concessions to 26 other Governments, as Foreign Secretary Miliband argued in the Financial Times on Monday.

So there are still lots of unanswered questions in the Conservatives’ policy on the European social model. Trade unions are unlikely to let them lie.

If you read “business attacks ruling on holidays” in the FT today, or the Sun’s lurid “fury over sick pay ruling” you might be excused for thinking that this week’s ruling from the European Court of Justice was all about the EU bashing British business. Luckily, much of the business reaction is either spin or bunkum.

Actually this judgement is mainly about shoring up existing good practice. The vast majority of employers in the UK already give their workers a set amount of annual leave that is unaffected by sickness absence during the year. Most employers also pay the full value of untaken holidays to workers who leave their employment due to sickness absence.

The judgement will only really make a difference to those whose sickness absence takes them up to the end of the leave year. These workers may now be due for holiday pay rather than sick pay for a couple of extra weeks. In many cases, this will have no cost to employers as they have contracted to pay the full rate for holidays.

Some employers will have to pay a little bit more in such cases, but isn’t it right that this small group of workers who are already suffering from ill-health should be protected from losing out on their entitlement to the minimum legal holiday pay?

On 17 December there will be a key vote in the European Parliament on the future of the opt-outs from the 48 hour week. I’ve just heard that the ETUC has called a demonstration at the Parliament in Strasbourg on the eve of this vote (16 Dec), starting at 1.30.

Thus its time to check that the UK could manage OK if the opt-outs ended. Here are some key facts:

• Ireland phased in the 48 hour week – this was followed by an economic boom – no problems there;
• long hours are associated with low productivity though fatigue and loss of concentration;
• ….and with poor work organisation and lack of investment in machinery, technology and training;
• long hours are associated with health problems, sickness absence and accidents; and
• long hours simply squeeze out the possibility of lifelong learning.

surely we could move away from the long hours culture without too much trouble if the opt-outs were phased out. This would not take effect until at least 2012 – economy booming again by then, i hope.

Evidence based policy

‘There was no sign that the extent of sustained long hours working was systematically associated with the business and financial needs of workplaces … workplaces have organisational choice and are able to reduce the need for sustained long hours should they choose to do so’ [i]

‘With the WTD only aiming to limit the working week to an average of 48 hours, it would seem to us that there is plenty of scope for particularly long hours to be reduced without encountering the problems that these economies are facing. Consequently we are not convinced of the necessity of maintaining the opt-out’ [ii]

[i] ‘The Business Context of Long Hours Working’, T. Hogarth, W.W.Daniel, A.P. Dickerson, D.Campbell, M. Winterbotham, D. Vivian, University of Warwick Institute for Employment Research, DTI Employment Relations Series 23, November 2003, p9.

[ii] House of Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee Report #7, ‘Labour Market Flexibility and Employment Regulation’, March 2005, paras 64/63. www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmtrdind/90/9002.htm

I was saddened to read the FT story that shows that the Government still does not quite “get” the case for the Working Time Directive.

The Employment Committee of the European Parliament is meeting today to discuss a report that includes the end of the so-called individual opt-outs from the 48 hour limit on average weekly working time. If the EP supports this view, and the TUC hopes that they will do, then we can expect votes in the European Parliament in December and a process of consultation between the EP and the Social affairs Council of Ministers in late January 2009.

The UK Government has tried to portray the opt-outs as being about the right to work. In my view this position ignores the facts, which are that:

• excessive working time is a serious risk to health in all occupations, and also a risk to safety in some occupations;
• most long hours workers want to reduce their working time;
• most long hours are not paid for their overtime hours; and
• many workers say that they were put under pressure to sign away their rights by their employers.

The TUC’s case is very strong. The Working Time Directive was introduced to protect workers from the health and safety hazards of excessive working time. Sadly, the opt-out has effectively neutered the directive in the UK, leaving us with 3.3 million employees (12.9%) regularly working more than 48 hours [1]. A further sign that the directive is not currently working as it should do is the fact that the number of long hours workers increased by 150,000 last year. As a result, excessive working time remains a serious problem, with far too many UK workers still falling prey to heart disease, stress related illness and unnecessary accidents [2]. It is therefore vital that the 48 hour limit is fully applied as quickly as possible.

It will certainly not be enough just to add more legal conditions to the use of the opt-out because the UK’s enforcement regime is very weak. Workers seeking to enforce their rights must make a complaint to one of a number of government agencies, depending on which industry they work in. However, the government has told these agencies that working time complaints must be a low priority and that there must be no proactive enforcement. In some cases, local enforcement agencies do not even know that they are responsible for enforcing the regulations, whilst the main Health and Safety Executive has been reported to turn down working time complaints unless workers have been injured or killed [3]. Since the Government agencies are the only way to enforce the 48 hour week, the net result is that workers often cannot enforce their rights even when their case is supported by a trade union.

It is also the case those most long hours workers want to reduce their hours [4]. Indeed, most of those who work excessive hours do not get paid for their extra time and so have nothing to lose from a more robust limit on working time. There is also a body of evidence that shows that many employers put pressure on their workers to sign the opt-out [5].

Notes:

[5] Abuse is documented in official studies as well the evidence provided by trade unions. Cases of abuse are reported in Barnard, Deakin and Hobbs, Ibid; Neathy F and Arrowsmith J, ‘Implementation of the Working Time Regulations’, Employment Research Series 11, DTI 2001; and Neathy, ERRS 19, ‘Implementation of the Working Time Regulations: follow up study’, DTI, 2003. The incidence of abuse is measured in a UK Government sponsored study carried out by BRMB Social Research, ‘A survey of workers’ experiences of the Working Time Regulations’, DTI Employment Relations Research Series No.31, November 2004, pps 25-29. The latter report found that just 28 per cent of UK long hours workers (eg those working more than 48 hours per week) know that there is a 48-hour limit; 23 per-cent of long hours workers who have not signed an opt-out say that they have experienced employer pressure to work long hours; and 50% of issues raised about the 48 hour week by workers are not resolved

Do you need cheering up after months of reading about the world financial crisis? Would the prospect of another holiday help lift your spirits?

August bank holiday is now just a dim memory and Christmas is still too far away to start counting the days on the wall of my office. This long haul is just one of the reasons why the TUC is campaigning to make the last Monday of October the new Community Day bank holiday.

Find out more about the Community Day campaign -   www.communityday.org.uk

What we have in mind is a celebration of voluntary and community activity that will involve both national events and local community fairs that will allow community groups, charities, sports clubs, youth groups, unions and everybody else working for local people can set out their stalls.

To get the tone of Community Day, imagine a cross between the millennium celebrations and red nose day. In short, we will be giving a boost to community organisation whilst having a good time.

All the voluntary and community umbrella groups are behind the proposal and we are lobbying the main political parties to get the idea adopted.

Now you may be thinking at this point “well that’s quite a nice idea, but isn’t it just pie in the sky to think about a new bank holiday at a time when the economy is under threat?”.

The beauty of Community day is that it would not be drain on the economy. There are three main reasons:

• businesses that trade on bank holidays, such as the leisure, tourism and retail sectors have their best days of the year. This group adds up to nearly a million businesses – just under 1 in 4 UK enterprises.
• Community Day would also bring further economic benefits to the UK through increased volunteering. The TUC estimates that this could be worth up to £500 million per year.
• Employee involvement in volunteering also creates personnel benefits for employers in terms of enhanced skills, networking and fitness

The net result is that if Community Day were to be introduced during the current slowdown, providing that all the planning had been done to in good time, it would actually be cost-neutral in economic terms.

However, if the Government does adopt Community Day – and why would they not adopt a proposal that has the support of more than 90% of voters – then we will need at least a year to prepare for a national event of this scale. It follows that the earliest realistic date for launching Community Day will be October 2010, by which time the UK economy should be growing strongly again.

We’ve all worked hard during the last few years so its time to get something back. Let’s get the decision to have Community Day made now. We will still have to wait a couple of years before we can enjoy the new holiday, but at least we will have something to look forward to.

Yesterday the Labour Party Conference voted to end the UK’s individual opt-outs from the Working Time Directive. Predictably, the Daily Mail reported this as a ‘lurch to the left’ . It looks to me more like a lurch towards common sense.

The 48 hour limit on average weekly working time is justified by a wealth of scientific evidence that regularly working long hours is bad for your health. The mains risks are heart disease and stress related illness

I don’t think that you have to be very far to the left of the political spectrum in order to agree that it is a bad idea for individuals to be allowed to opt-out of health and safety law – that way lies dangerous anarchy.

‘But shouldn’t the TUC ‘s role be to help people to work as long as they want?’, I hear you ask.

First, according to the official Labour Force Survey, more than three quarters of long hours workers say that they want to reduce their working time: second, more than two thirds of this work is unpaid; and – most importantly – there is absolutely no point in earning a massive wage packet this week if you are going to end up in hospital next week as a result of overwork.

If you are still not convinced, why not dip into these reports? The DTI paper shows how we could improve productivity while moving away from excessive working time:

• ‘Working Long Hours’, Beswick and White, Health and Safety Executive, 2003 http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/hsl_pdf/2003/hsl03-02.pdf
• ‘Managing change: Practical Ways to Reduce Long hours and Reform working Parctices’, DTI, 2005 http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file14239.pdf

No doubt these are these are the kind of evidence-based arguments that the European Parliament will look at when it return to the issue in the Autumn.