Rather, it’s the timing of such an approach, given that security contractors clearly fear any early petitioning of their customers might also lead to their competitors being invited to tender – perhaps by offering the 56-hour week – at a much lower service cost.
Since full implementation of the Working Time Directive still lacks a fixed date (‘Changes to working laws ‘unlikely’ before close of 2005’, SMT, October 2003, p7), perhaps it’s high time the industry helped itself here with joint agreements and co-operations reached between the British Security Industry Association, the National Security Inspectorate, the International Professional Security Association and other (regulatory) bodies.
If the aforementioned organisations can make continued membership conditional upon members’ customer contracts incorporating a change to the 48-hour working week from given dates then those security companies wishing to have any kind of independent quality assessment will have to comply. This will be self-policing. In signing a contract with the customer, the security company agrees to express terms that there will be no further increases as a result of full implementation of the Working Time Directive.
For example, the cut-off time for this – in terms of new contracts – could be given a fixed date (such as 1 August 2004). Likewise, the cut-off date for existing accounts – on yearly contracts – could be given as 1 January 2005. That way, those few accounts left on a three-year contract will then be subject to modification when the Working Time Directive becomes law. Of course, it would be made easier still if, in tandem, BS 7499 could be redrafted to reflect this change in policy.
Hopefully, we’d then have a level playing field as all quality security companies will be bound by the same rules from the same date, thereby making the inevitable changes in a far more orderly fashion. All properly regulated security companies – and, indirectly, all discerning customers – will be bound by these same rules. Perhaps the Security Industry Authority could also implement this as a condition of being entered on its upcoming list of Approved Contractors?
In the present situation, paying customers are being sent mixed messages from different security companies. Clients may not mind funding the change if it’s law, or indeed if they have nowhere else to go for a satisfactory security service. However, in this climate of no fixed deadline, the security companies themselves can only forward a weak argument until the actual day that the rest of the Working Time Directive is implemented.
The private security industry’s regulatory bodies and many of its manned security contractors vocally and publicly support changes to working hours for the benefit of employees and the resultant service improvement offered to clients.
That being the case, let them prove their backing by collectively implementing the change to a 48-hour working week now rather than waiting for the European Commission or our own Government to insist upon it.
Source
SMT
