Home Search Sitemap Contact Bookmark

Free Dissertations - Business Dissertations

The Above Reports Indicate That The Wtd Is Not Having A Positive Effect On ...


The above reports indicate that the WTD is not having a positive effect on the working lives of UK employees in general. If one has chosen to not opt out, an employee could find themselves working additional time with no compensation and workers themselves often choose to work longer hours, based on their financial requirements and the company's workflow needs. It is fair to say that such effects would be heightened in an SME where they have the additional constraints of limited resources and variable workloads. The statistics for unpaid overtime are exceptionally high, with 5 million workers putting in an additional 22% of work each week without any reward or additional time off in lieu. Although the report does not state this, it can be assumed that workers are likely to undertake this high level of unpaid work for one of the following reasons.
To keep their job in a competitive market as they do not see better prospects being available elsewhere working standard hours probably leading to a high level of frustration and work dissatisfaction
The employee is within an environment where this is considered the standard and they accept this in order to gain future advantages or simply because they want to be part of a successful team.
The employee chooses to work longer hours and does not resent the fact that it is unpaid.

Changes and their outcomes
The latest attempt by the European Union to do away with the Opt-out option occurred in Nov 2006. In the Morning Advertiser, ref http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news_detail.aspx?articleid=23797, 07/11/2006
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said, prior to the meeting in Brussels, ‘Surrendering the opt-out would be equivalent to abandoning British businesses but so would allowing it to be watered down with tons more red tape'
The European Union not only discussed scrapping the opt-out option it also wanted to reduce the maximum number of working hours per week from 78 to 60 for those countries that had the opt-out option; primarily this would affect Britain who are the country who have used the option most frequently.
The talks failed and the outcome was met with varying responses from the FSB and the unions. The FSB hailed the results as a success and praised the government for fighting to retain the opt-out; in contrast, the unions felt that workers would continue to be exploited. Both aspects were not passed, the opt-out option remains as does the current maximum hours of 78 hours. Ref http://www.newbusiness.co.uk/news/working_time_talks.html 08/11/2006
‘The collapse of discussions may be bad for relations between EU member states but for UK small businesses this is great news, said Matthew Knowles, spokesman for the FSB. ‘The status quo is much better than either the Finnish proposals or the loss of the opt-out.


Thanks