Credit where it’s due for improving workers’ rights

Larry Elliott’s column (The EU is no defender of workers’ rights, 25 October) argues that social Europe “never delivered all that much”. Europe may not yet be the socialist paradise we want it to become, but dismissing all its achievements on workers’ rights is a costly mistake. Elliott’s piece does not mention the most symbolic of all EU labour regulations: the working time directive. A longstanding obsession of the Tories and neoliberals in Britain, it remains the only standard applicable in the UK protecting workers against longer hours.

Regarding other rights like paid annual leave, workplace equality, part-time work, maternity and parental leave, workplace safety etc, the EU legislated to ensure the minimum standards are met in every single member state, whose government can then be even more generous – and, if not, the safety net is there to protect those most at risk.

Elliott’s argument that this is mere pessimism misses the point that as long as we trade with the rest of the world, we need decent labour standards abroad, as well as at home, to protect UK workers against social dumping. This is actually a red line for the EU in Brexit negotiations: ensuring a level playing field, so that EU workers are protected against future deregulation in the UK.

The revision of the EU posting of workers directive will put posted workers and their local co-workers on an equal footing, enshrining the principle of equal pay for equal work in the same workplace. Employers are now obliged to offer equal pay from the start of the posting, as well as the same allowances and reimbursement for travel and accommodation costs. It also allows the UK to deem national collective agreements as mandatory for posted workers – something that effectively solves the problems resulting from the Viking and Laval European court of justice case law that Elliott refers to.

There are battles we can’t fight on our own. Workers’ rights in a globalised economy is one of them.
Jude Kirton-Darling MEP Labour’s spokesperson on employment and social affairs in the European parliament
Agnes Jongerius MEP Coordinator for Socialists & Democrats group in the employment and social affairs committee of the European parliament

• While Larry Elliott has every right to express some scepticism about the EU’s defence of workers’ rights, he shouldn’t forget that the EU has been a crucible of innovation for gender equality policies, and regulation, to encourage male involvement in the care of young children. If the UK implements the 2019 work-life balance directive by 2022 two of our four months of parental leave will need to be ringfenced for fathers/partners and be paid.

At the moment UK parental leave is unpaid and confused in parents’ minds with shared parental leave (SPL). British fathers/partners can only use SPL if mothers transfer their maternity leave entitlements. Evidence shows that these maternal transfer designs, with low income replacement, are ineffective in promoting parental sharing in these vital early years. The UK’s statutory maternity leave is only highly paid for six weeks at 90% income replacement, followed by 33 weeks at a low flat rate (£145.18 weekly). Working mothers across Europe are much more likely to have 14 weeks at full income replacement.
Professor Margaret O’Brien
Director, Thomas Coram Research Unit, University College London

• Ronald E Conway (Letters, 29 October), in seeking to justify the contribution of the EU to worker health and safety, ignores the improvements in the UK since the 1970s driven by the groundbreaking 1974 Health and Safety at Work etc Act. He argues that EU law was key in driving down the number of worker fatalities and in bringing in risk assessment. That is not the case.

The number of worker fatalities had been on a downward trend since the early 1980s, and that trend continued after EU legislation came into play in the 1990s; how far EU law impacted on that continuing reduction is difficult to judge, but it was not the main driver.

Risk assessment was implicit in managing health and safety risks well before the EU-based management of health and safety at work regulations were made in 1992. The core duty on employers under the 1974 act “to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of their employees” required risk identification and risk management – the key components of risk assessment.

Yes, the EU has promoted significant improvements in health and safety, for example through the display screen equipment and workplace directives. But this should not hide the fact that the UK was a leader in developing health and safety law and practice well before the EU became active in this area. And it was recognised as such by other member states.
Peter Graham
(Formerly of Health and Safety Executive, now retired), St Albans

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