John Haywood, Director of Guild of Security UK Ltd today condemned the Government, Trade Unions and the Health & Safety Executive for failing to provide fundamental rights for the UK's workforce and blew a raspberry in the face of the European Commission.

John Haywood said "It is diablolical of this Government to allow the proposed changes to how Workingtime is assessed under the Workingtime Regulations.
It is even worse that the Health & Safety Executive is powerless to uphold legislation that was originally introduced to protect workers from risks due to working excessively long hours.

The new proposals mean that, where previously, the reference period for the calculation of the maximum average weekly hours worked was 17 weeks, it is now going to use a reference period of one year.

Unscrupulous employers will no doubt take advantage of that fact by giving workers more hours, for more days per week, then leave them out in the cold the following year with very little work at all.

My contempt for allowing this to happen is truly beyond words."

More research today in a report by Charlie Leadbeater indicates that overworked Britons have a yawning gap in their lives: sleep.
Adults now get an average of 90 minutes less than they used to. Lack of sleep is leading to problems ranging from irritable behaviour and inefficiency at work, to ill-health, road accidents and even divorce, according to the report, provisionally entitled Dream On, to be published next month by the Demos thinktank.

'Britain is running on a sleep deficit, and it is taking a growing toll, both economically and socially,' says the report's author, Charlie Leadbeater. The average night's sleep in Britain has fallen noticeably over recent generations, in both quality and quantity. A century ago, Britons slept an average of nine hours a night, but that figure is now seven-and-a-half hours. Adults between the ages of 25 and 55, particularly those with children, sleep even less.