British Workers Rights & The Social Charter

EDM number 426 in 1991-92, proposed by Frank Cook on 17/12/1991.

That this House notes the case of Kevin Murphy, abattoir butcher, employed by H. Hargrave and Co. (Wholesale Port) Ltd., Cargo Fleet Lane, Middlesbrough, and sacked because he refused to work after 6 p.m. or at weekends as he wanted time with his family; realises his normal hours were 0700 to 1600 Monday to Thursday and 0700 to 1500 Friday but that he regularly worked till 1800 each day; acknowledges his inability to appeal against dismissal because his engagement was less than the statutory minimum of two years; recalls the Prime Minister's justification for rejecting the Social Chapter and the draft 48 hour directive as 'the need to preserve British jobs'; realises that Kevin Murphy, who regularly worked a 50 hour week in a very hazardous environment, would have been protected by such provision; notes clearly that the directive does not prohibit employees working longer but rather prevents the employer compelling hands to work more under pain or penal sanction; notes clearly too that all collective agreements already in place, and all emergency service requirements, are exempt from the more stringent elements of the directive so that claims of the Employment Secretary to potentially adverse interference are patently misconceived; and expresses firmly the opinion that the Prime Minister, instead of scaremongering on these issues and condemning the national workforce to a cut-price, penny-pinching, money-grubbing, bargain-basement slave market, should be leading the charge to secure for Kevin and the British worker the same basic rights afforded his European counterparts and the same 'level playing field' accepted already by the more responsible firms within the British economy.

This motion has been signed by a total of 27 MPs.