Nobody likes being told what to do, but we have an industry that expects it’s workers to work very long hours with the effect on health and family life that leads to. Increasing the working week from 35 to 40 hours is one thing, but I’m sure those workers wouldn’t want to work a 70 hour week.
The regulations already seemed to have been watered down from the original idea of a 48 hour week. With extended periods of for the average to be calculated and periods of availibility and breaks not counting towards your 48 hours. Also it seems that enforced will only take place after a complaint has been received as opposed to random checks. Also it seems that night workers were going to be limited to 10 hours, but this can be waived under agreement.
2 hours a day in breaks and waiting to load, or tip will mean 60 hours a week. I’ve spent 8 hours waiting to tip once, although it was an exception.
I’ve voted for the WTD and my view is:-
I think it is the best thing to ever happen in this industry for employed drivers
A lot of people here have said they have voted against it just because they dont like being told what to do by government but I dont know if you have noticed or not but we have always been told what to do in this industry (whether everybody takes any notice is another issue) 
then there are the drivers that say " they are taking away my right to work the hours I want".But when you talk to them what they really mean is they only “want” to work these hours because they need the overtime to earn a living
When asked if they would want to work 70 hours a week or 48 hours a week for the same money funnily enough they choose the latter.
For too many years drivers have been brainwashed into the long hours low pay scenario and I think that this will hopefully put a stop to it.
How many of you have missed their kids childhood?
Missed their first step,first words,school plays,school sports days need I go on?
How many have not been there when a crisis at home has happened because you have been “up the road”?
How many have been divorced because their missus cant stand being left on their own all week with all the domestic problems on their shoulders?
It’s about time we were treated as equals to the rest of society and were allowed a social & family life or is that contradictory to our right to work twice the average hours of the rest of society.
Any employer (as I hope to be in the future) who dosn’t embrace this directive isnt worth working for.
They have the perfect opportunity now to go to there customers and say “because of this new directive we will have to increase our rate to…”
that way the employers can blame it euroland and the customers can at last start paying the true value of their transport instead of it being subsidised by the drivers wages.
True the prices of our goods in the shops will go up but maybe then the public may realise the true worth of the proffessional driver.
Whew all that and it doesn’t even effect me 'til 2009
Coffee you have obviously been reading the same newspapers as I have and yes the French are beginning to think again as are the Germans the only problem that they now have is how to back down without losing face 
so they will probably just shut up and not enforce it .
As for the company Smead in Holland even though the workers were in agreement with their hours being increased in order to help save their jobs the company got taken to the Dutch courts by the unions for breaking the legally binding union agreement signed in the previous year and the Judge agreed with the union and stopped the compnay from changing the working hours.
It was a very interesting article in last week’s TIME magazine Vasco but I guess it was in the German papers as well.
i voted against it (as most of you would have guessed anyway).
my feelings about this are that we are being conned yet again, in a similar way to which we got conned over the introduction of the tachograph.
the figures that were shown on the web site asking for opinions were very dubious indeed and showed that the effect overall would be minimal, they showed that todays drivers on general haulage do a little over the 48 hours as it is and that own account drivers do less than 48 hours per week.
the figures for part time drivers is what has brought the average down for both categories but they do not consider what the part time driver does as a full time employee.
the present ideals are too much too quickly, the working time directive nneds to be phased in or offered with a system for the drivers that wish to voluntarily opt out of the wtd.
one more concern is the fact that several companies have sprung up, all offering guidance on the effects of the wtd to transport operators, how can they do this when the wtd has not yet been finalised?