European Union social policy and employment ministers in the early hours of yesterday morning struck a landmark deal on the proposed Working Time Directive – aimed at providing a set of EU-wide limits on weekly working hours, after an agreement was brokered on the contentious opt-out clause and the exact level of caps to be imposed.

The agreement provides that any such opt-out must be stipulated by an agreement between a state’s social partners or its national law.

The retention of the opt-out clause had been fundamental to Malta, as well as to a number of other member states, and the matter had created a year-long stalemate.

Both the government as well as Malta’s social partners had continuously insisted on the possibility to opt out from the 48-hour weekly working time cap, which had been seen as limiting the possibility of overtime for Maltese workers.

The agreement now paves the way for the European Commission to present a comprehensive social package within the coming weeks.

In essence, the Working Time Directive deal restricts workers from working more than an average of 48 hours a week, and allows for flexible arrangements if they agree to work longer hours.

The deal will see the standard working week being capped at 48 hours, unless an individual worker chooses to opt out. A new protective limit, or cap, for workers choosing to opt out from the directive’s standard cap will be set at 60 hours per week unless a state’s social partners agree otherwise.

On-call time for workers such as doctors, another major sticking point over the last three years of negotiations, is to be split into “active” and “inactive” on-call time. Active on-call time is to be counted as working time, while inactive on-call time will not be able to be counted as rest time and will instead be counted as working time provided national laws and social partners are in agreement.

A new cap providing for a maximum 65-hour working week will be applied to workers opting out, if inactive on-call time is counted as working time.

The cap protects all workers employed for longer than 10 weeks with the same employer while the opt-out would be enacted only under specific conditions such as the provision that workers will not be eligible to sign waivers during their first month of employment and cannot be penalised for declining to do so, and that employers keep records on working hours of opted-out workers.

Ministers convening in Luxembourg also reached an agreement on strengthening the rights of temporary agency workers through the Temporary Agency Work Directive, granting temp workers the same rights in areas such as holiday and sick pay as their permanent colleagues.

Following heavy lobbying from the UK, the rights are to be granted only after employees have been in the job for 12 weeks, while the Commission had proposed a so-called “grace period” of just six weeks.

Support for the agency workers’ directive came from trade unions, while businesses were said to have criticised it on account that it would increase administrative and financial burdens instead of enhancing flexibility.

The Council Common Positions emerging from the deal will be sent to the European Parliament for a second opinion, as foreseen by the co-decision procedure.

Commenting yesterday, Employment Commissioner Vladimir Spidla observed, “This is a major step forward for European workers and it strengthens social dialogue. It shows once again that flexicurity can be put into practice. We have created more security and better conditions for workers and temporary agency workers while maintaining the flexibility that industry needs and workers want when reconciling family life and working life.

“The ball is now in the court of the European Parliament and I sincerely hope that this solid agreement will find a majority in the plenary.”