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EU Employers Must Track Hours, Not Just Overtime, [ECJ] Rules

Backing a union[s'] suit[s] against Deutsche Bank, the European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday that all employers must be required to have a system for tracking the working hours of staff.

When the Spanish trade union CCOO, short for Federación de Servicios de Comisiones Obreras, initiated the dispute, Deutsche Bank shot back that its obligations under Spanish law include merely keeping a record of overtime and communicating those figures each month to the staff and their representatives.

(Reference for a preliminary ruling -- Social policy -- Protection of the safety and health of workers --Organisation of working time -- Article 31(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EuropeanUnion -- Directive 2003/88/EC -- Articles 3 and 5 -- Daily and weekly rest -- Article 6 -- Maximum weekly working time -- Directive 89/391/EEC -- Safety and health of workers at work -- Requirement to set up a system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured)
[...]
REQUEST for a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU from the Audiencia Nacional (National HighCourt, Spain), made by decision of 19 January 2018, received at the Court on 29 January 2018, in the proceedings
Federación de Servicios de Comisiones Obreras (CCOO)
v
Deutsche Bank SAE,
intervener [US-Eng. Latin amicus curiae (sing.) amici curiae (pl.) "friend of the court"]:
Federación Estatal de Servicios de la Unión General de Trabajadores (FES-UGT),
Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT),
Confederación Solidaridad de Trabajadores Vascos (ELA),
Confederación Intersindical Galega (CIG)...

brief by United Kingdom Government, by Z. Lavery, acting as Agent, and by R. Hill, Barrister [?!]

"The requirement to record only overtime hours worked does not therefore provide workers with an effective means of ensuring, first, that the maximum weekly working time laid down by Directive 2003/88 -- which includes overtime hours -- is not exceeded and, second, that the minimum daily and weekly rest periods provided for by that directive are observed in all circumstances."

So the European Labour Authority has something to beat fraudsters with. That's a start.

archived
The Primacy of EU Law and its implications
A victory for European justice

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