Employment Law and Practice (in Human Resource Management) Essay

Employment Law and Practice (in Human Resource Management) - Essay Example It is because the Directive marks a profound transformation in the traditional deregulated understanding of working hours (IRS 1999). This paper briefly outlines the nature of legal regulation relevant to work time and work-life balance and the regulation’s impact on employers’ practice and concludes that regulation has little impact on actual practice of work-life balance due to the certain provisions. Introduction Regulation 4(1) of Working Time Regulations replicated the Article 6 of the Directive which provides that the working time for any employee in addition to overtime should not exceed from 48 hours per week for every seven days throughout a reference period of 17 weeks (cited in Barnard 1999). Moreover, Britain sought benefits from individual opt-out allowed by Article 18(1) (b) which permitted employees to exceed from 48 hours working limit in agreement with employers. The 1998 Regulations established detailed record keeping rules, however, businesses regarde d that it has ‘gold-plated’ the Directive (Barnard, Simon, and Richard, 2003, p.224). Amendments in Working Time Regulations in 1999 (Barnard, 2000) resulted in the diluted requirements of record keeping. Regulation 4(1) stresses that unless the employer get it in writing, the workers’ working time including overtime shall not go beyond 48 hours in a week. Regulation 4(2) demands from employer to maintain updated records of all the workers who opt-out due to the agreement between employer and employees (cited in Barnard, Simon, and Richard, 2003, p.225). Rationale for the Directive The EC Working Time Directive principally requires its member state to put the limits on the length of working day and week in addition to setting at least a minimum amount of leave that is paid(Lourie,1998,p.7).According to DTI(2001) the Regulation represented striking transformation, in particular for UK, where working time is not much regulated and existing regulation was annulled d uring 198s and 1990s(Cited in Neathey and James,2001,p.1).Formal intention of the Directive was a ensuring health and safety by decrease in long working hours(Goss and Derek 2001,p.205). According to DTI, WTR is perceived to have far reaching implications for UK, it is: â€Å"...due partly to the introduction of Regulations into a previously unregulated area and also to the working time patterns that operate in this country: full-time male and full-time female UK employees work on average considerably longer than those in   Ã‚  other EU countries.†(Cited in Neathey and James, 2001, p.1) When the Working Time Directive was implemented in 1998, the proceeding legislation was perceived to be; productive for the British economy in the form of enhanced productivity and innovation, meet the traditional social policy aims regarding health and safety (the legal justification for implementing the Directive), and to strike a balance between work and family (Barnard, 1999 cited in Bar nard, Simon, and Richard, 2003, p.248). However, Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget Statement during 2003 stated that, â€Å"In striking the balance between dynamism and social standards, our position is that no change to European regulations, like the working time directive, should risk British job creation† (cited in Barnard, Simon, and Richard, 2003, p.248). The Statement clearly reveals government’