Brewers link up to cut bosses' hours

Both Scottish & Newcastle Retail and Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries have teamed up with a union-run trade association to find ways to help pub managers reduce their working weeks to an average of 48 hours.

Peter Love, national officer for the National Association of Licensed House Managers, said many of his members were working more than 60 hours a week.

When the association, now part of the TGWU, raised the issue with leading operators three years ago, pub owners insisted that pub managers, as "autonomous decision-makers", were not bound by the Working Time Directive. This argument has evaporated since Bass backed off from a court challenge last year by two of its pub managers (Caterer, 2 March 2000, page 14).

A joint working party of S&N managers and union officials will come up with proposed changes by June, which will be put into place between August 2001 and May 2002 by a steering group of S&N management and the union. They will affect managers working in some 2,300 managed pubs, hotel bars and restaurants.

Kim Parish, personnel director at S&N Retail, said: "While our industry is not a nine-to-five business, we believe that working excessive hours on a regular basis is detrimental to managers and their families, S&N Retail and the industry as a whole."

The agreement with W&D, which currently has 850 managed houses, followed a promise by the company last May to keep managers' hours under review.

Love said that any changes at W&D should be in place by the end of the company's next financial year, in April 2002.But the agreement could be altered in the case of a possible takeover by Robert Breare if managed houses were transformed into tenancies, although Love said that the same terms and conditions would apply to any retained managed pubs.

By Angela Frewin