Book contents
- Front matter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: flexible EU governance in domestic practice
- 2 Theorising the domestic impact of EU law: the state of the art and beyond
- 3 EU social policy over time: the role of Directives
- 4 The Employment Contract Information Directive: a small but useful social complement to the internal market
- 5 The Pregnant Workers Directive: European social policy between protection and employability
- 6 The Working Time Directive: European standards taken hostage by domestic politics
- 7 The Young Workers Directive: a safety net with holes
- 8 The Parental Leave Directive: compulsory policy innovation and voluntary over-implementation
- 9 The Part-time Work Directive: a facilitator of national reforms
- 10 Voluntary reforms triggered by the Directives
- 11 The EU Commission and (non-)compliance in the member states
- 12 Beyond policy change: convergence of national public–private relations?
- 13 Implementation across countries and Directives
- 14 Why do member states fail to comply? Testing the hypotheses suggested in the literature
- 15 Three worlds of compliance: a typology
- 16 Conclusions: myth and reality of social Europe
- References
- Index
7 - The Young Workers Directive: a safety net with holes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Front matter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: flexible EU governance in domestic practice
- 2 Theorising the domestic impact of EU law: the state of the art and beyond
- 3 EU social policy over time: the role of Directives
- 4 The Employment Contract Information Directive: a small but useful social complement to the internal market
- 5 The Pregnant Workers Directive: European social policy between protection and employability
- 6 The Working Time Directive: European standards taken hostage by domestic politics
- 7 The Young Workers Directive: a safety net with holes
- 8 The Parental Leave Directive: compulsory policy innovation and voluntary over-implementation
- 9 The Part-time Work Directive: a facilitator of national reforms
- 10 Voluntary reforms triggered by the Directives
- 11 The EU Commission and (non-)compliance in the member states
- 12 Beyond policy change: convergence of national public–private relations?
- 13 Implementation across countries and Directives
- 14 Why do member states fail to comply? Testing the hypotheses suggested in the literature
- 15 Three worlds of compliance: a typology
- 16 Conclusions: myth and reality of social Europe
- References
- Index
Summary
Aim and content of the Directive
The general aim of the Young Workers Directive is to protect young workers from work involving dangerous or harmful employment conditions. To this end, it seeks to prohibit child labour, strictly to regulate and protect the work done by adolescents, and to ensure ‘that young people have working conditions which suit their age’ (Article 1). In order to achieve these goals, the Directive comprises thirteen compulsory minimum standards. They fall into standards relating to the area of occupational health and safety more narrowly understood, and into provisions belonging to the field of employment rights defined in a wider sense.
With regard to the former, the Directive (Article 6.1) imposes a general duty on employers to ‘adopt the measures necessary to protect the safety and health of young people’ working in their establishments.
More specifically, employers are required to carry out an assessment of the potential risks to young people before the actual take-up of work and each time there is a major change in working conditions.
If this assessment reveals any risk to young people, the employer has to provide for a free assessment and monitoring of their health at regular intervals. Such a free health check-up also has to be granted to adolescents working nights, both prior to the assignment and at regular intervals thereafter.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Complying with EuropeEU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States, pp. 118 - 139Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005