WORKING TIME DIRECTIVE : ETUC: COMMISSION NOT TAKING OBLIGATIONS SERIOUSLY.

• Position: Brief article

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) reacted with disappointment to the European Commission's communication on working time, published on 21 December 2010. The unions regret the few concrete proposals and the lack of political commitment in the communication on the second consultation of the social partners on revision of the Working Time Directive.

The key measures taken under consideration in the document are the following: 1. to consider on-call time as working time, while allowing certain derogations; 2. to encourage compensatory rest periods after working time while taking the specific nature of certain professions into account; 3. to keep the opt-out while encouraging member states to reduce their use of it through specific measures on compensatory rest periods and on-call time; and 4. to extend the reference period used to...