FSB condemns European Court ruling

10 March 2006

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) today warned that today’s European Court judgement on the Working Time Directive will lead to a large increase in red tape for firms and also prevent workers from seeing some of England’s World Cup games this summer.

The FSB reacted with dismay to the preliminary judgement by the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The judgement said that the UK Government had not been properly enforcing all aspects of the Working Time Directive. It found that the Government’s official guidance to employers should have been much stronger in ensuring lunch and other breaks are taken up by staff.

The Advocate General’s Opinion will now be considered by the full Court.

Alan Tyrrell, FSB National Employment Chairman, said:

"This is a potentially disastrous judgement for British business and we fervently hope that the full Court will reject it in due course. For an employer to prove that all employees have taken all the breaks to which they are entitled will place a heavy burden on small firms. Our members already spend an average of 28 hours per month filling in forms and no doubt this will add further to the pile of paperwork to be waded through.

"The current guidance from the DTI is eminently sensible where employees can take their breaks and employers have to let them do so. But crucially workers in the UK are not forced to take their breaks if they do not wish to do so. To change this guidance, as this judgement would seek to do, will reduce flexible working options when the Government is encouraging our members to increase such practices.

"When the EU is committed to increasing economic activity and employment, such a decision flies in the face of reason. If the EU's goals on the Lisbon agenda are to be reached then the full ECJ has to reject this opinion. Flexible working practices allow small firms and their employees to work to best suit their situation. Removing this flexibility will undoubtedly restrict small business growth."

The case can be summarised as follows:

• Case C-484/04 relates to the Working Time Directive, specifically around breaks for workers. The Commission, prompted by UK Trades Unions, has taken the UK Government to the ECJ to change the current interpretation of the Working Time Directive in UK law. The UK Government has transposed into law the section on breaks for workers (both between and during working days) and the official guidelines advised employers that they must ensure that workers “can” take their rest but they are not required to ensure that they “do” take their rest. It is therefore up to the employee to choose when to take their breaks. The FSB argues that if the worker can take their break but does not choose to do so (for example they do not have a lunch break so they can go home early) then there is no loser and no reason to change the current regime.
  
• A side-effect of enforcing lunch hours could mean that workers will no longer be able to work through their lunch hour to be able to leave work early. For example, on June 15 England play Trinidad and Tobago in the World Cup. The game kicks off at five o’clock UK time. If a worker wants to leave early so that they can get home or to the pub in time for kick off, they would want to work through their breaks to do so. This judgement would prevent that.

---

Press releases, papers and documents published on this page are the intellectual property of an organisation unrelated to Central Lobby. We promote their parliamentary and political campaigning activities as they are subscribers to the Central Lobby service.

As such, Central Lobby does not edit, endorse, or attempt to balance the opinions expressed on this page. The content of press releases and other such types of content are the responsibility of the originating organisation.