Date: 17/06/2009
Following last week’s unsuccessful vote in the European Parliament (EP) to permanently exempt the self-employed from the laws, owner-drivers will now have to deal with a 48-hour work week under working time legislation in addition to drivers’ hours regulations.
Self-employed drivers have been temporarily exempt from the Working Time Directive for the road transport business since the Road Transport Directive (RTD) was enacted in 2005, and they are allowed to determine their own working hours as long as they abide by the drivers’ hours requirements.
This was supposed to stop in March of last year, but the European Commission has been attempting to exempt them indefinitely. This idea was defeated last week in a vote in the EP by a margin of 368 to 301.
Owner-drivers are likely to suffer as a result of this because they will be limited in how many hours they may work each week and will also need to keep track of their working hours in order to prove that they have complied with the law.
