Grandpa:
RjanYou could try to find excuses for evermore, but the reality is that in recent years drivers have seen an ever rising EU bureaucracy and a corresponding rise in practices by companies to reduce the costs involved. We now live in a ‘gig economy’ and that wasn’t happening before – using cheap foreign labour is a simply a reaction to that. The longer we stay in the EU, the more the transport industry will be taken over by cheap foreign labour because a minimum wage is a good one to someone from Romania.
The WTD 2003/88/EC is an EU directive. The legal requirement of open borders which attracts cheap labour is an EU ruling. Both Labour and the Tories dragged us into all this and the majority of people voted for it to end because we’ve seen the results. Both the German and French economies are stagnating and despite all the hype, I’m personally waiting for the next recession which will be the excuse for the hourly rate to drop even further. Eventually the minimum wage and the current hourly drivers rate will meet somewhere in the middle in an unhappy medium. Getting dragged into the EU by politicians was the worst thing that ever happened to the British working class and we didn’t even vote for it.
And I agree with your points about the single market. Freedom of movement of capital, goods, services, and people across democratic boundaries are not in workers’ interests
But I’m not clearly seeing where all the EU bureaucracy is.
If we set aside matters of payroll and minimum working conditions which I’ve already addressed (by pointing out they merely reflect strictures that already existed previously in domestic law - drivers’ hours rules go back to the Road Traffic Act 1930 iirc), I’m struggling to think of any other examples.