
European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail - adwn
https://www.dw.com/en/ecj-eu-employers-must-track-working-time-in-detail/a-48734055
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holstvoogd
ITT: Office & IT workers who have no clue that this might not be just about
them but the millions of factory workers, shop attendants, builders etc that
are forced to work overtime without pay. And you better not say anything,
because you are very replaceable.

My personal experience? I've had to record my work times accurately for a few
years, it was kinda annoying, but also freeing. Wanted to work in the weekend?
no problem. Wanted to leave early or sleep in? no problem. Now I 'just kinda
have to make sure I work my 40 hours' and always feel pressure to stay 9 till'
5 and do as little as possible outside of that.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
> Wanted to work in the weekend? no problem.

Except that in many countries in Europe you aren't allowed to work on Sundays,
and time tracking will be used to enforce it.

~~~
toolslive
It's actually more liberal than that. You are allowed to work on Sunday, but
it's more expensive for your employer as they need to compensate the
discomfort. Double pay and triple pay are not uncommon (although taxes will
eat most of that). In the end, your employer probably will not let you work
Sundays if it isn't worth it (to them).

~~~
Ntrails
> Double pay and triple pay are not uncommon (although taxes will eat most of
> that)

People have the weirdest views on how tax actually works. Taxes will eat the
same proportion, or potentially marginally more - but unless a persons
marginal rate is suddenly >50% you're obviously wrong.

I would go as far as to suggest this is a non issue in the majority of cases
where overtime is paid.

~~~
ovi256
Tax rate for Western EU workers is definitely above 50%, if you look at
aggregate national income that finishes in government budgets (about 53%).

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JanSt
I'm punching in and out every day at work / in the home office. Either on a
terminal or in the web browser. Best thing ever, takes 15 seconds a day.

Being called at home (when not working) because of an emergency? At least 2
hours are added to my timesheet, even if I solve the problem in 5 minutes, so
I only get called if it's really important. Adds a lot of sanity and stops
abuse.

We are very productive because we actually get to relax from work.

~~~
sonnyblarney
That's great, but would be a contravention this new law apparently.

The law doesn't want to know how much you bill or how much is allocated, but
how much you actually work.

I the context of labour, surely it makes sense, but there, most hours are
logged.

Outside of that it gets a little harder.

~~~
zaarn
It's fully on the employer if they log _more_ time than you actually worked,
the issue that was addressed with this ruling was people who'd clock out and
then continue to work or where there is no clock and people simply write down
how long they worked.

The issue the court had was that if you write it down then there is the
possibility that you worked overtime but didn't actually write that or your
employer changed it. If start and end of work time are accurately tracked then
you can sue them for not paying you overtime.

~~~
adwn
> _the issue that was addressed with this ruling was people who 'd clock out
> and then continue to work or where there is no clock and people simply write
> down how long they worked_

No, this ruling cannot prevent this practice at all. How could it, without a
government official standing watch?

~~~
michaelmrose
You rely on employees or former employees raising an issue and investigating.
There is little money to be saved by not paying bob for 15 minutes that one
time. Companies that abuse this do so pervasively and consistently providing
ample evidence of their misdeeds.

Alternatively employees can raise the matter in court where the additional
incentive of money paid to settle the claim makes it worthy of a lawyer
handling the matter purely based on expectation of obtaining a cut of the
money.

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hn_throwaway_99
> A German confederation of employers said that the ruling was tantamount to
> demanding a return to workers punching in and punching out on arrival and
> departure, calling this impractical given modern working practices,
> smartphones, home offices and the like.

Not really in agreement with the ruling but that's a dumb argument. Tons of
tech contractors bill by the hour where accurately tracking time is a
financial requirement.

~~~
consp
True, And those same contractors do not take the hours worked off contract
into account which by experience is combined always more than the stated work
week hours. It's a cheap way to not deal with overtime.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> And those same contractors do not take the hours worked off contract into
> account

What do you mean? If I'm working on your project, I'm billing you for my time.

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iovrthoughtthis
I worry this will have a negative impact on culture in work environments with
more of a return to “bums in seats” management rather than outputs focussed
management.

That’s a pretty myopic view though many jobs have no objective outputs which
makes hours one of the measurable metrics.

~~~
mordae
This.

It solves nothing, since the crooks will just continue to cook the books. This
is already "mandatory" in Czechia and I have yet to hear about anyone being
sued for not upholding the Labor Code.

On the other hand, the tech employees will have to take extra care to manage
their attendance sheet with arbitrary requirements such as no weekends and/or
no late-night work contrary to the actual practice of being on-call as needed
with it being already factored into the pay.

Unless there is a significant bounty for employees who report such breaches
for their current employer, the only businesses upholding the law are the very
same businesses who would have done so nevertheless.

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mcv
I've got mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I hate the added
administration of overly detailed time-keeping, on the other hand, it's often
too easy to employers to pressure employees to work for more hours than
they're actually paid.

The gripping hand, though, is that many employers aren't interested in hours,
but in results. If they just pay you for certain results, and getting those
results takes too much time, is it because the employer is too demanding? Or
is it an employee who is slow to do that kind of work, but still prefer it
over other kinds of work? It might also lead employers to pressure employees
to work faster within the hours they're supposed to work, and fire those who
can't keep up. I don't think it's going to solve the problem of overly
demanding employers, though it probably helps in some cases.

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yason
Traditionally, what is on the records and what happens in real life are two
very different things. In each case I've seen in private companies, public
offices, or universities, the timesheets are duly filled with what is expected
and then the work and life continue as before.

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kerng
Interesting how used I got to the compensation model of a lump sum per month
(or every 2 weeks) for software engineering jobs.

One of my first programming jobs required time tracking and so there was
really no need to work more then 38 hours a week - because working more cost
the company extra and always required approval from manager. Weekends and
holidays were compensated 2x, during week after 5pm 1.5x I believe.

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sonnyblarney
Maybe a better idea would be to spell out expectations, so there's at least
transparency in terms of comp.

I grab emails, take calls and do little things quite often in the evening,
impromptu, it's rather difficult to measure all of that in many management
functions.

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mar77i
The ruling is strange, because in my opinion part of a modern working
environment would be driven by some form of mutual trust. If you put the
burden of "proof of accomplishment" on the workers, that may stifle workplace
attractiveness and pose a bureaucratic hurdle. Hence cracking down on
untracked, yet (or even therefore) quality employment relationships would
naturally appear a step in the wrong direction.

I get it, the Spanish workers may not have shared such mutual trust with
Deutsche Bank, but I don't get how that has to have consequences for everyone
else?

Or am I (and maybe even the reporting journalists) reading this wrong and work
contracts may, and from now on have to specify otherwise explicitly, if that's
how they do business?

~~~
phoe-krk
> If you put the burden of "proof of accomplishment" on the workers, that may
> stifle workplace attractiveness and pose a bureaucratic hurdle.

An example of such a system is a glorified Excel sheet, given to your manager
monthly, where you write how many hours have you worked on a given workday and
which project you should report the time on, if you have multiple.

Getting acquainted with the system might take half an hour. Filling it in, in
most trivial cases, is a copy-paste that takes up to five minutes a month. In
case you have a more complicated case of working times, you should already be
accustomed to noting down your work time daily, even if for your own good.

~~~
mar77i
You have a point there, I stand corrected.

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romanovcode
I guess it's good for workers: No one will work over what he is suppose to
work and also will stop answering emails/slack/etc after work hours and/or in
the weekends.

Employers have this stupid notion that the workers are slacking but in office
setting IMO this would backfire by malicious compliance from the workers.

Also, good job Spanish Trade Union in making things worse for everyone in EU.

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ovi256
I suspect it's only a fraction of employees that work more than they're
supposed to, but as they're workaholics that work a lot more, they move the
mean and it has a big positive impact for employers.

If this is true, this ruling is bound to have an impact on EU economic
activity. And I don't see how it can be good, given that nobody's thinking
that EU labor is too cheap. If it's applied at face value, it can only reduce
worked hours at current costs, or have employers pay more for current output.
Definitely can't increase EU labor competivity.

~~~
brador
There’s more to life than productivity. The quality of life for EU citizens is
high and getting higher.

~~~
adwn
> _The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher._

But not thanks to this court ruling. The only thing _that_ will bring
employers and employees is more bureaucracy.

Employees which let themselves get exploited before, will let themselves get
exploited with precise time tracking as well. After all, who's going to check
whether you actually tracked the time you spent working after hours –
answering e-mails, calling back a client, or fixing bugs in your code?

~~~
panpanna
Seems very reasonable to me, don't know why you call this bureaucracy:

"The Court holds that, in the absence of a system enabling the duration of
time worked each day by each worker to be measured, it is not possible to
determine, objectively and reliably, either the number of hours worked and
when that work was done, or the number of hours of overtime worked [...]"

ALL places I have worked at have this in some way. Maybe not every day and
maybe not always 100% correct but how else will they bill projects
internally???

~~~
adwn
For project budget and billing purposes, it is sufficient to track the number
of hours each day. This court decision, however, would require to also track
the start and end time, as well as the durations of all breaks. That's because
there are laws regulating how much break time you _have_ to take each day
(dependend on how many hours you work) and also how much time has to pass
between two work days. If you're working from home, you'd have to track every
little interruption in which you walk the dog, take your child to
kindergarten, etc., otherwise your start and end time won't fit your billed
hours.

Of course, nobody will bother with such tedious timekeeping, and will instead
just enter plausible but made up values for start and end times, rendering
this court decision useless.

~~~
pergadad
No idea why you're so bitter about this, but obviously there is no expectation
that each minute is recorded. This just spreads a common practice to the
exploitative employers that don't respect workers rights - such as the right
to have a20 minute break during the day.

~~~
adwn
> _obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded_

Bingo! In practice, employees will just fill in whatever values are
convenient. Nothing's going to change for an employee who was pressured
(explicitly or implicitly) to work unpaid overtime – now they'll be pressured
(explicitly or implicitly) to not track the time they're working after hours.
It's just more bureaucracy for everyone, including for honest, fair employers.

And yes, I'm very bitter about this. Bureaucratic, ivory-tower decisions like
this one are partly responsible for phenomenons like Brexit and the German AfD
party, which in turn pose a danger to the prosperity and peace we enjoy in
Europe.

~~~
panpanna
Oh the "let's be sensible" argument...

Please do not follow this road. According to EU the main target of Russian
disinformation campaign during current EU parlamentet elections is to spread
the picture that EU is colapsing due to
bureaucracy/corruption/incompetence/all power moving to
Brussels/migration/Islam (select one depending on your target) while their
country is solid as rock.

They have a ~1 billion Euro budget to spread that garbage this year. Please
don't do their work for free.

~~~
TomMarius
So we can never argue about it because the russians might try to use it
against us? I would rather know the EU has problems so I can get away in time.

~~~
sgift
If the EU has problems we can discuss those left and right. The difference
between having problems and making them up is relevant here.

