On-call time will still count as working hours

The government said yesterday it will not be changing the practice of considering inactive on-call time as being part of the working hours.

Concern about the future of workers' on-call time was raised after EU Social Policy Ministers approved a revision of the Working Time Directive. The directive, which still has to be approved by the European Parliament, stipulates that inactive time does not have to be considered as rest time and will only be considered as working time if national law demands it.

This clause could have an effect on doctors, who regularly have inactive on-call time consisting of rest during long shifts and the Medical Association of Malta said it would be lobbying the government to ensure that doctors' inactive on-call time continues to be considered working time. The Social Policy Ministry said the draft proposal gave member states the option to divide on-call time into active and inactive and exclude inactive on-call time from the calculation of working time. In Malta all on-call time has always been considered as working time and the government had no intention of changing such practice.

The Medical Association of Malta (MAM) had all along been arguing for the retention of the status quo.

MAM president Martin Balzan had argued that not considering inactive on-call time as working time would have gone against doctors' interests because they would be unable to leave the workplace during inactive on-call time. "It would not have been a family-friendly clause because doctors cannot go home and spend time with their family," he said.

With the same argument, he said, implementing such a clause would be tantamount to only paying firemen for the hours spent fighting blazes or not paying waiters for the time when there are no people in a restaurant.

"Isn't this also working time?" he asked, pointing out that the association had been concerned that under the clause, a surgeon on a 24-hour on-call shift could risk having just the hours spent performing surgery count as working hours. Dr Balzan added that, although inactive on-call time varies from department to another, many doctors tend to have between three and four hours per shift - which can go up to 30 straight hours. This is normally used as rest on the job.

The directive was approved during the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council on Tuesday.