The 65-hour working week

It is more than likely that the return to pre-1917 labour legislation will affect the shitties, lowest-paid jobs

"This is more like a push back to the 19th century than a step forward along the 21st century". Last night, Spain's Work Minister, Celestino Corbacho was the only one to speak some sense. After four years of the Blair & Brown Governments pushing forward the proposal, the European Union finally buckled. The legal limit for weekly working hours is set to return to pre-1917 levels: from a maximum of 48 hours, it will now be raised to 60 (65 hours for certain professions). Though, until recently, the French and the Italians had vetoed it, Sarkozy and Berlusconi's electoral successes saw off Spain as the only country at odds with the British proposal.

The 48-hour week was one of the most significant social conquests of the 20th century. In place for 91 years, it was introduced to curb the horrors of the Industrial revolution: Dickensian tales of people spending a whole day slogging away. After a century of legal protection, if your boss requires you to work 60 hours a week, it'll simply be a case of put up or shut up.

You may be justified if you harbour the sneaking suspicion that the people who are going to knock themselves out for 60/65 hours aren’t going to be the gentlemen sitting in the European Parliament. It is more than likely that the return to pre-1917 labour legislation will affect the shitties, lowest-paid jobs, perhaps those that only immigrants (but hadn’t we been told there was too many of them?) will be ready to take on. So if, until today, you may have been able to utter that "at least I'm only putting up with this shit for 48 hours a week", now you may have to revise your figures.

The change was justified as a "necessary measure" to tackle "global competition" - as if stripping workers' rights one by one was the way to stand up to India, China and Bangladesh. What next? Sweat shops? Allowing back child labour "in order to survive in this globalised village" and all that bollocks? One thing for sure: they've never had it so good, our bosses. Not for a hundred years at least.