The government-backed opt-out from EU laws imposing a maximum 48-hour week for millions of employees is putting the health of 3.6 million British workers at risk and damaging efforts to increase productivity, the Trades Union Congress has warned.
"We realise the CBI pressed the government into defending the opt-out. However, it is clear they have simply ignored all the evidence on this issue and are not acting in their members' best interests," Brendan Barber, the TUC leader, has told Alan Johnson, the new trade and industry secretary.
Mr Johnson and EU employment ministers will next week discuss tighter controls on use of the individual opt-out to be put forward by the commission after MEPs voted to phase it out within three years.
Vladimir Spidla, EU employment commissioner, is expected to propose that the individual opt-out be retained but only if it can be proven to be of economic benefit to companies and health checks are regularly carried out on employees working long hours.
Mr Spidla is under pressure from a growing number of countries, including in eastern Europe, to retain the opt-out, which the UK and they regard as a keystone of flexible labour markets. Others want it phased out by 2010 at the latest.
In a letter to Mr Spidla seen by the Guardian, Mr Barber urges him to adopt the latter option, arguing that the government's own evidence shows only a quarter of long-hours workers had signed a written agreement to waive their right to the 48-hour limit and a further 900,000 said they had come under employer pressure to work longer hours.
The TUC leader said working longer hours had not increased flexibility or led to higher productivity. British workers worked the most hours per week or three hours more than the EU average but productivity was only 95% of average and Britain ranked 10th out of the 15 original members.
In a separate letter to Mr Johnson he said most workers above the 48-hour limit wanted to reduce their hours but were prevented from doing so by their employers. "It cannot be right to exhort our exhausted long-hours workers to do more; rather, we must have a serious debate about improving productivity."
