Dear Member of European Parliament
The resolution of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs passed on 5th of November 2008 is leading to an annulment of the compromise agreed among the EU-member states in the discussion concerning the maximum permissible working hours. Should the parliament maintain the position derived from the first reading of this resolution, working time will be limited to 48 hours a week. National exceptions, and with that the exception known as opt-out, are to expire three years after the directive on working time comes into effect.
Dear Member of Parliament,
We note this development in great sorrow.
The implementation of this policy position will prohibit the current flexible working time systems common in German industrial and public fire brigades. By altering the existing possibilities for exceptions, the protection offered by the nationwide system of emergency response is endangered.
The German fire brigades, with 1.3 million firefighters, of which 100,000 are professional firefighters, are asking for your assistance.
Fire brigades should be exempted from the directive working time, because the workload of hospital doctors is not comparable to that of firefighters. The active response times, particularly in the case of industrial fire brigades, are far lower than those for doctors working in hospitals. It is therefore inappropriate to extend the directive covering hospital doctors, which is based on different occupational health issues, to firefighters.
The abolition of opt-out would also endanger the professional fire brigades’ existence. The necessary readiness of the fire brigades’ services (in 24 hour-working time in line with the exception known as opt-out, and also legitimated in the existing EU-directive on working time and in German law) and with that the possibility of working times exceeding 48 hours a week, is reasonable and in accordance with the goal of maintaining a high level of flexibility for safety in fire prevention, technical assistance and rescue services.
Current predominant practice, which ensures the necessary safety in the areas under jurisdiction, is based on a 24-hour shift model, normally divided in 8-hours blocks of working time, active on-call time and inactive on-call time. Work in inactive on-call time is rare – only in the cases of emergency. After this 24-hour shift a 24-hour non-working shift follows always. In order to balance annually working time account 35 additional 24-hour non-working shifts are otherwise expressly agreed.
Round-the-clock protection must be maintained. The only alternative would be a round-the-clock shift system (3x8 working hours per day), which would in fact require a considerably higher number of daily shifts at socially problematic hours.
The abolition of the possibility to use opt-out would unavoidably lead to insufficient staff in the fire brigades, because fully-qualified firefighters are, and will be in the foreseeable future, in short supply on the labor market. In the end this will lead to deficits in safety.
Bücher
Chairman
