2015 UK General Election

[I_am_not_mafia]

UKIP is not about Europe, it's just a means for big business to exploit us further by removing EU protection.


http://www.organizedrage.com/2014/07/the...-come.html

While David Cameron talks a great deal about the need for the EU to reform, he is less forthcoming about what type of reform he is proposing and who will be its main beneficiary. If you ask ordinary voters what they most dislike about the EU three points are continuously raised. The failure to ask the EU electorate when the commission proposes to enlarge the union by inviting another nation state to join. The Commission's refusal to accept the results of EU referendums until they get a result which is to their liking and finally the democratic deficit which lays at the heart of the EU.

So what does Cameron wish to reform and not only Cameron but also Nigel Farage and his troupe of petty bourgeois Thatcherites. They have one piece of EU legislation above all others within their sights, the Working Time Directive. It gives EU workers the right to a minimum number of holidays each year, rest breaks, and at least 11 hours off in any 24 hours; it also restricts excessive night work; and provides for a day off after a weeks work, and the legal right to refuse to work no more than 48 hours per week.

Today we live in a world in which trade union membership is decreasing by the day, with employers resorting to a methodology which was first established in the 19th century. Any whiff of joining or organising a trade union on site and the workers involved will be sacked. Thus this single piece of legislation is all the more important as it protects millions of workers from exploitative employers, big and small. Profit, more profit is the mantra of our age but none of it trickles down to the workers on the shop floor.

The UK is not known as Food-bank Britain for nothing, its because far to many workers are on starvation wages and zero hours contracts.

Is it a crime for workers not to have to work more than 48 hours a week? What is wrong with having 20 days paid holiday a year? Should workers not be protected from exploitative employers?

Working excessive hours is cited as a major cause of family breakdowns and illnesses like stress, depression, alcoholism and accidents at work, the whole purpose of the directive is to protect people's health and safety at work, something which is anathema to neo liberals like Cameron.