Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2004
MR IAN
BRINKLEY AND
MR PAUL
SELLERS
Q100 Earl of Dundee: You mention the UK
dichotomy of long working hours, but not terribly good productivity.
I think you intimated that some managers may use long working
hours as a substitute for failure to invest enough capital or
to improve working conditions and to train employees. Is it therefore
your view that if the UK WTD opt-out were to be removed, as a
result these weaknesses would be addressed which at the moment
you think are leading to low productivity in the UK?
Mr Brinkley: It would certainly give employers
a major incentive to do so, because the easy options would be
closed down. What we do know from the research which has been
done is that British managers are not as good as their counterparts
in other countries in introducing these new work practices and
getting them to perform effectively. That does suggest there is
something which is holding them back from making sure that the
introduction of these things is happening on the same scale as
we see in other comparable economies. It will certainly be a powerful
incentive to address these more fundamental issues.
Q101 Earl of Dundee: Your corollary might
almost be, in a curious way, that you would recommend the opt-out
for our continental partners, if the managers are better there,
but you would correctly say that so many of our managers are not
good enough and therefore the two things, the WTD opt-out married
to less than competent managers, do not co-exist well.
Mr Brinkley: Indeed. The weaker the management
base is, the more likely they are going to go down the easy route.
If you have poor quality managers, then if they can simply load
the hours on, they will do so. Looking at the other issues is
much more difficult, more challenging, but that is where you will
get the sustainable growth and sustainable productivity. You need
to try to push as many managers and as many companies as possible
down that high productivity route.
Q102 Lord Howie of Troon: I have been a
manager in my time and I worry how poor I was at it. If the management
is not good, as you say, will they be able to cope with this problem?
The incentive might be there, but the capability might not be
there, if you are right.
Mr Brinkley: Yes, that is why it is very important,
when you are talking about removing the opt-out, to try to match
it with all the work government are doing in terms of trying to
improve managerial skills, managerial capacity. There is now quite
a big programme going through to try to address these very issues
through the skills strategy. It is trying to make sure you have
this read-across from removing the opt-out from the Working Time
Directive and improving the skills of management in industry and
all the other things which have been done to drive up productivity
in the workplace. It would be a mistake just to look at the opt-out
as a single isolated measure. It has to be seen as a package of
measures to try to drive up workplace productivity and the performance
of managers is a very important part of that.
Mr Sellers: We feel that there is some parallel
with the national minimum wage. Low pay was another solution which
some managers were tempted to use. Cutting that off was widely
predicted to lead to disaster; obviously it has not done that
so far and there have been some productivity improvements in the
UK which have stemmed from the national minimum wage. In all this,
it helps if there is a narrative which managers can follow, a
series of best practice ways to deal with this.
Chairman: Anyone else on this point?
If not, can we go on to health and safety? I am always very keen
on this because this, of course, is a directive which is made
under the article of the Treaty which deals with health and safety.
Sometimes when you see some of the comments which are about you
wonder whether you have been swept away into some other part of
human enterprise. Basically that is the key. We do have a number
of questions about health and safety and Baroness Howarth of Breckland
would like to open up.
Q103 Baroness Howarth of Breckland: In your
written evidence you state "There is compelling evidence
that working more than 48 hours per week is associated with a
range of physical and mental problems". It quotes the HSE
report estimating that stress-related illness costs UK employers
£1.24 billion a year. Do you have reliable independent information
to show what proportion of the workforce suffer directly from
working more than 48 hours and what proportion of the stress-related
illness costing £1.24 billion is attributable to working
long hours as against other factors? I am also interested in whether
you have a comparison of that with other European countries? Is
there an evidential cross-over piece of work which shows a comparison?
Mr Sellers: The work in that area was somewhat
under-developed and perhaps that is not surprising because we
work long hours in the way that the rest of Europe does not quite
match. We have an incidence of long hours which is four times
that of the European average for instance. I am not sure that
there is comparative work on stress. We lead the European Union
in cases of stress and we lead the European Union in long hours
and the Health and Safety Executive, among others, have said that
the likelihood of suffering from stress is higher for those who
work long hours. Other than that, there is no quantifiable work
to pin it down more tightly.
Q104 Baroness Howarth of Breckland: Do you
want to say more about the first part of my question? Do you have
reliable independent information which can separate out the stress-related
illness from the long hours as against other factors, because
there are all the other factors? How is the evidence based?
Mr Sellers: Are you trying to get at how much
stress is actually caused by work and how much is caused by family
issues? Is that what you are trying to get to?
Q105 Baroness Howarth of Breckland: Yes.
Mr Sellers: I am not sure that is fantastically
helpful, because those background issues are there whether you
work long hours or not. Stress is caused by people moving or divorce
and that background of stress is there anyway. It is the additional
stress of long hours which we think—
Q106 Baroness Howarth of Breckland: But
you say quite clearly in your evidence that this is caused by
long hours. What I am trying to get at is whether that is verifiable
evidence and you are saying it is a bit difficult to verify. So
what basis do you have for saying that £1.24 billion a year
is due to long hours?
Mr Sellers: There is a clear link in the evidence
and the most authoritative that we have has come up with that
number. We have not actually checked that number ourselves.
Mr Brinkley: I think it would be true to say
that it is probably more circumstantial evidence than something
which would stand up entirely in a court of law. It is pretty
strong circumstantial evidence.
Q107 Baroness Howarth of Breckland: There
is also work which shows that people may work long hours but do
not feel stressed if they are satisfied in their workplace. Therefore
looking for satisfaction of job and workplace environment could
have as much benefit as shortening hours. What do you think about
that comparative evidence?
Mr Brinkley: It would be a rather dismal prospect
if we thought that contentment and happiness and achievement in
the job actually depended on working long hours. That comes from
the job itself and you should not actually make the linkage. Certainly
looking back over the past decade, by and large the average satisfaction
people get from jobs has gone down and that is what the evidence
from the SRC research programmes has shown and this is also the
same period where the number of hours worked in excess has gone
up. There is possibly a general association there.
Q108 Baroness Greengross: There is also
some work at University College on inequalities in health and
a lot of evidence to suggest that the people who have autonomy,
self-direction in their work have much longer life expectancy
and also a healthier, longer life. Those are the people who on
the whole work longer hours. I am just wondering whether anybody
has tried to bring those things together. It would be very interesting
to know whether those people, because they are self-managed and
have an opportunity to direct their own work, are the people who
suffer this stress in your view, or whether we are looking primarily
at a different level of worker where they do not have enough choice
and autonomy in their workplace, which is a huge factor in creating
stress.
Mr Brinkley: You are right: there is that clear
association. People who feel they have more control over how they
do their work and the pace at which they do their work very clearly
register higher levels of job satisfaction and it is undoubtedly
true that they are less likely to suffer from stress. There is
a major problem which needs to be confronted across much of industry.
The working-hours connection is more incidental than a direct
cause of it. Economic theory alone suggests that the degree of
contentment and achievement, job satisfaction, will go down with
every extra hour you work. You are undoubtedly right in saying
that people who have more autonomy do have less stress, but I
would not necessarily say it is linked to long hours. I do not
think you need to work long hours to have a fulfilling job.
Mr Sellers: It is quite interesting to unpack
how much autonomy some managers and professional people have,
if they are driven by heavy workloads. Some people are in a situation
of having to work overtime as well. In many cases people do not
just have a choice over what hours they work, even managers and
professionals.
Chairman: I should mention that I spent
last Thursday participating in a research project on stress and
health. I do not know that they learned much from me, but they
were trying to.
Q109 Baroness Massey of Darwen: What about
the rights of workers to choose to work longer hours? Should that
not be protected? Do they not have the right to do that?
Mr Brinkley: Certainly as a health and safety
measure you cannot have an absolute right to work long hours.
No-one would seriously argue that if you were driving a lorry
or a train or aeroplane or something of that sort you should simply
be allowed to work as many hours as you can. Health and safety
legislation is where this measure comes from and inevitably it
is going to impose constraints on what people can and cannot do.
The Working Time Directive is, in that sense, no different. The
opt-out was a way of trying to address this problem. It was trying
to reconcile the desires of a small minority of people to work
long hours with the desires of the majority to work a reasonable
number of hours. In our view that has failed. In terms of a practical
workable measure which would reconcile those two particular interests,
we have not found a workable solution to the opt-out.
Q110 Baroness Massey of Darwen: When you
say "a small minority of people" and "the majority"
what do you mean? How do you know?
Mr Brinkley: We have a variety of polling evidence
about the number of people who say they are trying to reduce their
hours. Paul can give you the actual figures, or we can write with
more detail, if that would be more convenient.
Mr Sellers: There are some questions in the
labour force survey which are helpful in trying to answer this:
"Would you like to work fewer hours?" "Would you
like to work fewer hours even if that meant a reduction in your
pay?" a rather stronger formulation. When you ask the first
question to full-time workers you get 10 million people saying
they want to work fewer hours. If you ask those who work more
than 48 hours, 80 per cent say they want to work fewer than 48
hours and it is no surprise that a smaller number, but still three
in ten, say they want to work fewer hours even if their pay were
cut as a result.
Q111 Baroness Massey of Darwen: Is this
workers across the board?
Mr Brinkley: Yes.
Mr Sellers: We have done a detailed breakdown
by occupation as well.
Q112 Baroness Brigstocke: I can see how
it works for managers and workers, if they are in a factory or
in an office, but an awful lot of people will not fit into the
categories, however many categories you go and ask. Very
often the people who answer questionnaires are those who answer
questionnaires and the ones who are quite happy with what they
are doing do not bother. I have to say I just worry about economic
theory dictating one's life. I wonder how we here compare with
other EU Member States when it comes to making different arrangements
for people with different needs from the point of view of working.
Can you imagine somebody at university who is just about to make
a great discovery and then says "Oh, no". I know it
is a ridiculous example, but you could have an example of somebody
feeling like that and suddenly having to stop and leave the office
or whatever it was when they had a good idea for their company,
for instance. I cannot understand how this would all work in other
EU countries. Do you know how it does, to make the differences
for people who need to work longer hours?
Mr Brinkley: We do not have any data on that,
but clearly it must do because it has not had any impact on the
creativity of European fashion industries or the great universities
of Europe or the areas you are thinking of. These are all world
class centres and they seem to have coped with the idea of having
some control of working hours very easily; it does not seem to
have inhibited them in any way. Clearly there must be ways round
all these potential problems and they seem to have worked in Europe.
An interesting follow-up suggestion would be to try to find out
a bit more detail about exactly how they have done it and see
how we could apply that in this economy.
Q113 Baroness Brigstocke: It would be very
interesting.
Mr Sellers: We are working on that.
Q114 Baroness Brigstocke: They might not
always be doing what they say they are doing.
Mr Brinkley: I think I would defend the robustness
of the labour force survey, which is where our numbers come from.
It is actually a very big sample survey and has a fairly good
track record of reliability. I treat the answers coming out with
a degree of confidence.
Mr Sellers: There are some exemptions for genuinely
autonomous workers as well within the limits of the Working Time
Directive. Somebody who can decide to go off and play golf tomorrow
is going to be covered by these kinds of arrangements and it may
well cover the research scientists you mentioned.
Q115 Lord Howie of Troon: How do you deal
with those workers who choose to work longer hours by having two
jobs?
Mr Sellers: The Road Transport Directive is
about to come into force and that is a slightly different piece
of legislation, but overlapping with the Working Time Directive,
with no opt-out and a 48-hour limit for HGV and PSV drivers. The
relevance of mentioning this piece of legislation is that they
have actually taken into account the fact that workers might have
two jobs and the legislation actually says that the employer will
ask the worker in writing whether they have another job in order
to collect the hours. The Working Time Directive does not do that
and it seems quite sensible for employers to ask that kind of
question. You might want to know whether someone was working for
your competitors, for instance.
Q116 Lord Howie of Troon: I hesitate to
name an occupation, but I was really thinking of postmen. They
have a tendency to fill their day in a meaningful manner. How
do you feel about that? I think you probably like it.
Mr Brinkley: I am not quite sure what the question
was, I am afraid.
Q117 Lord Howie of Troon: If you have a
postman who is doing his fulltime job, a hypothetical one, postman
Bob, he will very frequently have finished his working day by
the afternoon and he may find himself engaged in other gainful
employment for the rest of the day over and above his 48 hours
or whatever it is. Is he committing some misdemeanour?
Mr Sellers: The Working Time Directive limits
would apply to both jobs.
Q118 Lord Howie of Troon: It does not apply.
He can do this regardless, so the Working Time Directive becomes
in some respect a kind of chimera.
Mr Sellers: All the hours will actually be counted
for the purpose of the limits. If you have one job, two jobs,
three jobs or four jobs, those hours will count towards the 48-hour
limit.
Q119 Lord Howie of Troon: Are you telling
me that he would be prevented from working more than 48 hours
in his two jobs? Is that what you are telling me?
Mr Sellers: That is correct. That is what happens
across the European Union with the exception of the UK.
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