Burnout Britain looms as Gove and allies plan to axe Working Time Directive

How would the EU referendum have gone if the NHS Brexit bus had replaced that infamous pledge of £350m extra a week with the truth? Perhaps with something like: The EU Guarantees Holidays and Rights At Work. Let’s Work Longer Hours And Scrap Time Off. Let’s Take Back Control.

It’s an interesting thought experiment to conduct in the wake of reports that Environment Secretary Michael Gove, who stood in front of that bus and then tried to weasel his way out of its lie when challenged on it by Labour’s Wes Streeting in the House of Commons, is pushing for the scrapping of the EU’s Working Time Directive at today’s crunch Brexit cabinet meeting.

The headlines in newspapers friendly to him billed this as offering workers the opportunity to do more overtime and get paid more. Indeed, a “source” told The Sun on Sunday that the move would “put back the power to decide how hard to work into the hands of the people who matter – the ordinary British worker”.

The Ashes series might not have been over so quickly if the England cricket team only had access to that sort of spin.

Misleading reporting about the directive and how it works is rife. The fact is that the ordinary British worker can already opt out of it if they so choose. Moreover, the protections it offers to those that don’t want to are relatively weak, and the same goes for the enforcement of them. They seldom scare unscrupulous bosses – I was told by the TUC of a mechanic who had been ordered to sign the opt out or get lost. Such stories are by no means uncommon.

The directive’s adoption has nonetheless seen the number of people working more than 48 hours a week falling to 3.3m from 4m. But the British worker still works some of the longest hours in Europe – only Austrian and Romanian employees spend longer at their desks. Meanwhile the biggest problem with the UK labour force continues to be its poor productivity. The two are very likely linked, because the more exhausted you are, the less productive you are. And the less healthy you are.

Research by Heath & Safety Laboratory conducted in 2003 found “sufficient evidence for us to be concerned about the potentially negative effects of working long hours on physical health”, with cardiovascular disease among men cited as a particular problem.

It also found “some evidence” that “working long hours can lead to stress or mental ill health” and said that there was “cause for concern” about the potential for more accidents.

The potential for scrapping the directive would be bad enough were it just hours that it concerns itself with. But there’s a lot more besides that at stake. It also guarantees paid holiday, which hundreds of thousands of female part-time workers, for example, didn’t get before it was adopted. Then there are rest breaks, and days off.

Again, the protections it offers are still weak – when it comes to days off it demands only that workers get one a week, or two in any fortnight. In other words it still allows people to work 12 days at a stretch. But again they are better than nothing.

Given all this, why would anyone willingly vote to get rid of them? The answer is they wouldn’t if they understood what was really at stake.

But of course, it isn’t workers that the plan is aimed at, and it is laughable to suggest that it is. It isn’t even really aimed at their bosses. Good ones already know that they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces by driving their employees into the ground, and offer them better than the directive demands as a result.

No, the plan is in fact a sop to the antediluvian Tory right, on whose support Mr Gove is likely to depend if he is to further his ambition of becoming prime minister.

If that means skewering some of the most vulnerable workers in Britain as part of an attempt to create a Thatcherite theme park, or a foggy Singapore, something that only a small number of Leave voters would probably tell you they were after when they took their decision, then so be it.

With apologies to Winston Churchill, seldom in history have so many lies been told to so many by so few.