That is not the motivation given by the OP though. The OP States: IOW, If I work 40 hours a week and there are lots of unemployed people, the Government should be able to come into my job and tell my employer to cut me down to 20 hours a week and give that 20 hours to a new hire. They do that (*)(*)(*)(*) in Europe! Matter of fact I can't think of any labor decision at all that is left in the hands of employers in Europe. There apparently is a Law to cover every detail. That is oppressive. I would protest against that, and probably ensure that the new hire couldn't get to work regularly like slashing their tires, cutting brake lines, whatever it took. You don't steal my hours or mess with my money, that would be very bad for health.
Simple, lets say that you have 30 hour a week legally. You can work 60 hours if you want but after the program.
It's called community. You can't get the whole pie, you need to share and if you don't want to they will force you. Maybe individuality works in the States but here we try to help everybody to live.
What if some members of the community (be they individuals or member states) are willing to sit back and take it easy whilst everybody else makes up for them? That is what is happening, so what now?
In Romania for example it's 8 hour per day. But in some places that are opened 24 hours you can work after you finished your shift.
It means what if you work 8 hours doing hard work producing more then the person who takes the other 8 hours. As work is about producing something. Production = GDP = Tax income = Government spending. If the other person is doing less for the same amount of pay as you are then there is no reason for you do to more then him or her. That starts a vicious cycle of declining production, which ends up harming all of society (community). It's better to have one person producing more then 2 people producing less.
The problem is that those of the leftwing persuasion know this, but they are willing to sacrifice efficiency in the name of fairness. They are perfectly, totally willing to introduce intentional inefficiency of production in order to propagate fairness and equality. For leftists, it really is better for everyone to be equally poor, than to have some get ahead over others.
I have no objections to Romania altering its labour laws if it so wishes, but I do object to outsiders having the right to tell the British (and out elected parliament) to alter ours.
My driver works at Kroger.. and they change his hours from 14 to 60 at their whim... and he reluctantly joined the union. So much for that.
What does he do at Kroger (grocery store for the Europeans)? You kinda have to join the union when working at Kroger. But I can respond better if I knew his job.
I'm afraid that I can't agree with this point. If one person uses his 8 hours to sleep, the company that he works at suffers loses, and nobody whats that. So that person will get fired and someone that actually wants to work will replace him. There's not circle.
Sorry but when UK joined the EU, you knew very well that there are some laws that you have to obey and even more laws will come in order to better integrate its members. It was your choise. You are part of an alliance, you can't act as an individual.
Nobody is saying there shouldn't be some kind of cap between what is considered full time/part time or even how many hours a day you can legally work. 99% of the jobs offered in the world are based on 8 hour work days (in Europe a bit shorter). I have an example of this which I will share in a bit. Now if the Government mandates the hiring of said person and reducing the productive persons hours. What you are failing to get is you are forcing a worker who works X amount of hours to give up Y amount of hours so an unemployed and unproven person can be hired by force of Government law. What the OP fails to understand is back in 2000 France passed a law which lowered the standard work week from 39 hours to 35 hours in attempt to lower unemployment but allowing for 180 hours of overtime (a few years later). What ended up happening was unemployment didn't go down as much as they theoretically predicted. Why? Because all those employed decided to work more then 35 hours and who wouldn't when after 35 hours you'd start getting overtime. The way overtime was set up was 180 hours a year. Well working 4 hours extra a week basically works out to a total of 45 weeks. Now in France you get 5 weeks of vacation (it's the law, I kid you not). So for 50 weeks of the year it would have no effect on current workers. Now when you look at public holidays which another 2 weeks worth and you literally end up with no change in the system. During this period Companies started to set production quotas off setting the reduced work week. So instead of helping the situation it ended up benefiting business as they got more production and at the same time could tell workers you don't need to come in tomorrow. I suggest people read a book called "Bonjour, Laziness" by Corinne Maier who actually suggest to be lazy and pretend to work.
That's not true. No member of the public in the UK ever voted to join the EU. That was the decision of our elected politicians who were never ever given a mandate to subject us to EU laws. In fact when the UK held a referendum on staying in the "Common Market" as we called it then, in 1975, the electorate was explicity told there'd be no loss of sovereignty. Obviously, our politicians lied and their deception continues to this day, but despite those lies opposition to EU membership continues to grow. We know we can't act in our own interests and that's why a significant proportion of us now want to withdraw. No one is actually sure how big a proportion because the government refuses to allow a referendum now, presumably because it is not confident that the decision would go in its favour, ie to remain as a member.
I think Parliament has a very legitimate fear that if the UK did withdraw, the retaliation from the Continent would be swift and catastrophic. The EU would resent the UK essentially forever, see it as a competitor instead of a friend, and attempt to merciless crush its economy. The UK is in a rather unenviable position and Nigel Farage has noted it before. The UK really has to make a choice. It can back out of the EU and seek to integrate better trade relations with its commonwealth States, or it can join the EU in a more integrated fashion and become a slave to Brussels Technocrats, but I do not beleive that the UK can forever straddle the fence. At some point the People themselves will demand a resolution to the bad position the UK is in. Parliament tried to achieve the best of both worlds, but "both worlds" are becoming increasingly divergent in terms of economic policy and even on the role of Democracy of the Nation State. The EU technocrats want absolute control over Europe and they don't want any one individual state to be able to just buck trends whenever they want through democratic means. They don't want stuff like the People in Greece having referenda on following EU policies within their borders. The UK faces a momentous choice and neither one will be perfect or suit the needs of every UK subject.
As SiliconMagician said, UK has to make a decision. You are with us or against us. However you can't be on your own. Iceland tried to do that and now they are begging to join EU and they will for sure.
The EU would be monumentally stupid to attempt to crush our economy because quite simply the trade balance is far in favour of the rest of the Continent. To start a trade war would hurt them more than it would us and I really don't think the EU states would accept any such action and we would be pleased to continue trading, but it's up to them how they react. However if to be seen as a "friend" we must subsume ourselves in an expensive, corrupt, bureaucratic regime, I don't think that friendship is worth having. What unenviable position has Nigel Farage noted? I don't know whether we can straddle the fence forever (and, like Denmark, but unlike all the other non-eurozone EU member states, we are not under an obligation to join the euro) but people want one thing and politicians want another, and politicians use deception to get elected, as always, but now the stakes are much higher. Parliament hasn't been acting in the interests of the British people for quite some time now, so we haven't had anything like the best of both worlds! Absolutely true. That's the problem. We don't face a choice at all because parliament has already made that choice for us and to hell with democracy.
Please see my reply to SiliconMagician. And Iceland are begging to join the EU? Can you provide a link for that please.
Ahh but here is the rub. The UK is NOT iceland. The UK has this huge built in market already called "the anglosphere" which is all of it's former commonwealth states and the USA. Nigel Farage in his recent speeches to the dictator Rumpuy stated it quite clearly that the UK should be ashamed at turning its back on its former empire and joining the EU. The UK really CAN fall back on its commonwealth system to make up for much, if anything, the Europeans try to do to them. Iceland has no such system.
From my earlier reply to SiliconMagician: "We don't face a choice at all because parliament has already made that choice for us and to hell with democracy." - Parliament wants to stay in the EU. "... politicians use deception to get elected ..." - like the oft repeated claim that millions of jobs depend on EU membership. They don't but these politicians refuse to publicly debate the issue with their opponents and the electorate never gets to hear a balanced view before voting. This is changing but slowly as people begin to question what they hear more, but 40 years of established party propaganda is very hard to overturn!
