The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has - in the case of Spanish Trade Union (CCOO) v Deutsche Bank SAE - handed down an important judgment about working time.
The CCOO wanted a system in place for recording how long its members worked each day - including the number of hours worked overtime - to enable the verification that these complied with their stipulated working conditions.
The group action against Deutsche Bank stated that, as a necessary measure, every worker is entitled to a minimum daily rest period of 11 consecutive hours per 24-hour period; that they should be guaranteed a minimum uninterrupted period of 24 hours plus the 11 hours’ daily rest and that there should be safeguarding against workers’ average working time for each 7-day period, including overtime.
Under Spanish law, employers are only required to keep a record of overtime hours worked by each worker at the end of each month. Evidence was given to the court that these records were not accurate - and that 53.7% of all overtime worked was not recorded.
The European Court of Justice ruled that employers must take steps to make sure their staff are not exceeding the 48-hour maximum working week and are taking adequate rest breaks.
The CCOO said that the ECJ judgment made it clear that the previous Spanish legal framework did not comply with European legislation.
Sybille Steiner - Employment Partner at Irwin Mitchell - said:
“This decision is binding in the UK and will affect those employers who do not accurately record the numbers of hours their staff work – whether these are paid or unpaid.
This decision arguably goes further than our laws require and employers should make sure that the systems they use to measure working time are ‘objective’ and ‘reliable’ and reflect all hours their staff work – not just those set out in their contracts of employment.”
In the UK, under the Working Time Regulations 1998, employers have to keep records to show that workers are not working in excess of 48 hours a week and the rules around night work are complied with. They do not, however, explicitly require employers to record data to show that daily and weekly rest periods are met.
Records have to be kept for at least two years and these rules are enforced by the Health and Safety Executive. Employers that breach them can be prosecuted and fined.
