Unions negotiate tougher working time rules

Sweden

The Vårdförbundet and Kommunal health and care unions have negotiated new and stricter rules on working time that will ensure workers have the right to proper rest time and in particular meet the requirement for 11 hours consecutive rest every 24 hours set by the Working Time Directive. The negotiations with the SKR and Sobona employer organisations took place following criticism from the European Commission that existing provisions did not ensure compliance with the Directive. The new rules will mean that any reduction to the 11-hour rest period will only be in exceptional circumstances and employees will be properly compensated. There will be new arrangements providing for joint monitoring of the rules that will come into force in October.

More like this

May. 16, 2019

Key ruling on working time

Europe

On 14 May the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued an important ruling that effectively requires Member States to establish rules for employers to record their employees' working time. In a case about overtime brought against Deutsche Bank by the FS-CCOO services federation in Spain, the ECJ stated that workers' rights to protection as afforded by the Working Time Directive cannot be properly ensured unless there is an objective measure of their working hours. The Court said it is up to Member States how they ensure that employers comply with the ruling.

 S
Mar. 02, 2017

Union warns of threat to working time rules

Switzerland

(March 2017) The vpod public services union says that unions need to resist proposals from a national commission for further deregulation of working time. The union warns that it the commission's recommendations are implemented this will lead to more overtime, more night work and more Sunday working. Vpod has also attacked the idea that certain categories of senior managers and specialists should be exempt from working time rules.

 S
Feb. 22, 2018

Court rules that standby time can be working time

Europe

In a significant new judgement (Matzak, C-519/15), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that standby time away from the workplace may be counted as working time. In previous rulings the ECJ has said that on-call time at work should be counted as working time but normally if a worker is on standby away from the workplace this would not count as working time as they are not at the disposal of the employer. In the Matzak case involving a Belgian firefighter the Court found that the requirement to be at the workplace within eight minutes imposed a restriction on how the worker spent his

 S