Brussels, Sept 24(ANI): Brussels bureaucrats have threatened to go on strike over auropean Union (EU) decision to extend their working hours because, according to them, the eight-hour working day, would ruin their 'family life'.
The EU plans to extend the civil servants' working hours by half hour a day as a cost-cutting measure in the wake of the financial crisis in Europe, the Daily Mail reports.
The move comes in the wake of mounting pressure from governments to reduce the Brussels' administrative budget.
The new measure would extend their five-day working week from 37-and-a-half hours to just 40 hours.
But unions representing EU civil servants resisted any attempt to increase their working hours.
"The unions and staff associations replied to this proposal with a categorical "Niet!",
(which means 'no' in Dutch), Equipe d'Union Syndicale's (European Parliament's joint trade union)statement said.
"The attractiveness of the European civil service would deteriorate. It would be a socially-backward step that the unions and staff associations reject emphatically," the statement added.
Critics of bureaucrats' stance urged the union to 'get real' when the ongoing financial crisis is rendering several unemployed.
They said bureaucrats' extending their work hour routine would save EU citizens from paying a one billion euro tax a year.
"Public sector staff the world over are facing cutbacks and wage freezes. But here in Brussels they seem to think they live in an economic microclimate where money grows on trees and the world owes them a very comfortable living," European Parliament's Conservative leader Martin Callanan said. (ANI)
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