
Travelling to work 'is work', European court rules - wj
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34210002
======
furyg3
In the US, I worked for a consulting group in the bay area (Fremont). There
was a big discussion about whether or not we were on the clock while driving
to client sites, because some people wanted to live in Tracy and other people
closer to the office, and the client sites were all over the place. So how to
calculate this?

One way to do it was just to say you have to show up to the the Fremont office
before going anywhere ('fixed office'), but this can be wasteful for everyone,
since the client site can be in the opposite direction of the office. The
final agreement was that the time it would have taken you to get to/from the
office was your own time, and from then on you're on the clock and paid.

So if you live next to the office and get sent somewhere, your whole commute
time to that place is paid. If you want to live in Tracy and drive an hour
into work, that's ok, but your commute to the client site is only paid if it's
longer than an hour or so. If you had to go to two client sites in a single
day, the time between the client sites was always paid.

Nobody really had any idea if this was legal or not, but all of the
consultants agreed it was very fair.

~~~
alistairSH
My wife's current employer handles it this way. And it does seem like a fair
compromise for cases of occasional semi-local travel (in her case, a remote
office that's 50 miles from home and visited monthly, vs. her usual 12 mile
commute).

Her previous employer didn't count any commuting to client sites as "on the
clock". One of many reasons she left. Granted, this was a Beltway Bandit and
all work was at client sites, but as contracts changed, her commute changed
dramatically (not just within the city, but as much as 2 hours on the
Interstate).

------
roel_v
The article's headline is not in line with the ruling of course, but it's not
even what most people in this thread are assuming. The ECJ's rulings are to be
interpreted very narrowly. In this specific circumstance, the company _closed
an office_ after which people had longer commutes. So this ruling in no shape
or form means that people who took a job with a certain commute now all of a
sudden will be paid for that commute! It's only the people where, through the
choice of the employer, the commute has become longer, who can use this as a
precedent. Precedent case facts matter a lot!

~~~
DanBC
Doesn't this apply to eg care workers who visit clients in the client's home
where the care worker's employer doesn't have a central office?

The closing of the office is an unimportant detail of this particular case.

I haven't seen anything else that interprets this case as narrowly as you do.

~~~
roel_v
"The closing of the office is an unimportant detail of this particular case."

Says who? _All_ precedent is to be interpreted narrowly in scope wrt to the
facts, and that's not even taking into account that judge-made law as a
concept is, in general, foreign to most EU jurisdictions (with the UK being
the most notable exception). While there is not much dispute over the primacy
of the ECJ over national law (although de jure this is not even a given!),
there is no reason to assume that broad, general doctrines laid out by the ECJ
all of a sudden constitute new law in the members of the Treaty (I mean, I'm
not even talking about the ECJ-equivalent of a 'van Gend en Loos' ruling, I'm
just talking about de factor interpretation by member state judiciaries and
administrations).

Furthermore I'm a bit perplexed at how easily you seem to dismiss the closing
of the office, which is absolutely material to this case. It's quite different
when a unilateral decision of a party affects the counter party, or if both
parties knew what they got into from the start! Also, or maybe 'especially',
in employment cases. Please tell what you base your assertion on, because it's
in direct contradiction with all literature and practice.

(and yes, I do have a law degree, although it's been a few years since I last
studied any EU law, so I'm not claiming to be an expert here).

~~~
BlackFly
Where is your law degree from? The vast majority of EU coutries follow civil
law (as opposed to common law) and courts are supposed to interpret law, not
interpret precedents. Basically the only holdout to this is the UK, which
leads to civil law sometimes being referred to as Continental law.

That being said, the closing of the office was definitely the important fact
in this case, but this doesn't narrow the scope of the law. The law says that
companies cannot require work weeks of more than 48 hours. Excluding commutes
can lead to preposterous results, so there are a variety of circumstances
where commute time must be considered as part of the work. This case just
happened to be about one such set of circumstances. Where to draw the line is
determined by the individual judges.

~~~
roel_v
"The vast majority of EU coutries follow civil law (as opposed to common law)
and courts are supposed to interpret law, not interpret precedents. Basically
the only holdout to this is the UK, which leads to civil law sometimes being
referred to as Continental law."

Right, which is what I said.

------
lfowles
> Time spent travelling to and from first and last appointments by workers
> without a _fixed office_ should be regarded as working time, the European
> Court of Justice has ruled

Oh well.

~~~
phowat
Thankfully, because I wouldn't want to be discriminated against if I chose to
live further away from work so I could afford a nicer, bigger place.

~~~
robzyb
Fun fact: In Japan most companies will pay for your public transport ticket.

Never heard any suggestion of discrimination based on this though.

Although time cost > public transport cost.

~~~
patio11
_Fun fact: In Japan most companies will pay for your public transport ticket._

This is primarily a tax optimization, FWIW. If I pay you 10万 in cash, I owe
the government ~１万 and you owe the government maybe 3万 or so (depends heavily
on bracket). If I pay you 10万 for your train ticket, neither of use owes the
government additional taxes.

Thus, if we come to the agreement that your labor is worth 35万 a month to the
company, it is in our mutual interest to characterize that as 25万 of salary
and 10万 of "reasonable travel expenses."

There exists a spectrum of how aggressive companies are on this one. Some play
things very safe and use the actual cost of the shortest public transportation
between your house and the office, going to _elaborate_ lengths to calculate
that. Some say "We assume, unless you tell us differently, that transportation
costs you more than 10万 a month, and will accordingly compensate you for the
first 10万 of it." (The reimbursement is only non-taxable up to １０万.)

(Edit to add: １万円 = 10k yen = ~ $100. Much like our Indian friends count
things in lahks and crores, Japanese breaks numbers lower than a hundred
million into a count of 10^4 rather than a count of 10^3.)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
This is also why we get 600 RMB every month on a card in China for lunch. So
Microsoft does offer free lunches to some employees, just not in the states.

The 万 is used in China as well, confusing as heck when talking about home
prices.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Funny how using 円 for both Yen and Yuan carried over to the dollar-style
currency symbol, ¥, which is also shared.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I rarely see the yen symbol used, I don't even know how to type it, instead we
have 人民币, 块, 元。

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Oh, I know it's not used in actual Chinese or Japanese text. It's more used in
other languages in place of the hanzi/kanji.

------
xacaxulu
The best thing about being a consultant and running your own business is that
every expense or spent time around work is considered WORK. As a basic
employee in the US, you never get these sort of benefits and write-offs. When
I hear people commuting 1 hour to work, that means they work 50 hours a week
(assuming a 40 hours at the office). Their hourly rate is effectively much
lower.

~~~
pmiller2
This, for sure.

I have a 1 hour commute now. When I go looking for another job, the commute
time will be factored into the salary number I'm willing to accept. Every 5
minutes I add to my commute on average constitutes 3.33 hours a month doing
things I don't want to and wouldn't normally do (commuting). The way an
employer gets me to do things I wouldn't normally be doing for them is to pay
me more. It's simple.

I don't like to drive and hate sitting in traffic, so if I can't reasonably
take public transportation, they have to pay me more to drive, too.

This has resulted in me flat out turning down interviews with companies I'd
otherwise consider, and I'm ok with that.

------
century19
I guess this should also apply to work trips then? I knew one guy who would
only book a flight from 9am on Monday mornings, rather than being pressured
into Sunday night or sillyAM Monday morning.

When I told other people who travel for work abot this the response was pretty
much that he should be fired.

~~~
jasonkester
Sad, but this seems to be hardwired in to human nature. See also 6am-3pm,
10am-7pm, "four tens", telecommuting, unpaid leave to supplement vacation, and
other things employees do to improve their own quality of life without harming
anybody else.

There's a dominant personality type that, when it sees somebody getting
something nice seeks to tear them back down. The concept of "what a great
idea. _I could do that too_ " never breaks into conscious thought. Only rage
and the desire to bring the offender back to the status quo. Ideally with
punishment.

~~~
century19
\-- Ideally with punishment

Yes, or shame. "It will look like you aren't a hard worker."

------
Retra
Makes sense; nobody is going to tell you it's not your job to get somewhere
you are being payed to be.

~~~
verelo
But...is it the employers issue if you choose to work 4 hours away from where
you live? Are they allowed to not employ people based on where they live as it
is going to impact their costs?

I like the idea, but i get the feeling the implementation will result in no
major benefit for anyone.

Edit: I'm an idiot and i understand now :-)

~~~
thesimon
"The ruling came about because of [...] a company which [...] installs
security systems. The company shut its regional offices down in 2011,
resulting in employees travelling varying distances before arriving at their
first appointment."

(Using US examples in the following, because probably the majority of the
readers understand it better than European cities, even though it does not
apply to the US).

Say you are living in NYC where your company is based. Every day you get an
email telling you where you have to install a new security system. One day it
might be Brooklyn, one day it might be Washinton D.C, because everything is
being managed from the central NYC office.

Why exactly should traveling to and between the appointment (say Newark in the
morning, Bronx in the evening) not be considered work? The employee is not
living 4 hours away from the first appointment because he wants to own a
bigger house, but because his employer has told him to work there.

~~~
owen_griffiths
That example makes sense, but if you want to impose a rule you have to worry
about the cases where it doesn't make sense. What about a plumbing business
which dispatches jobs within a 5 mile radius. If the employee moves 2 hours
away, suddenly the company has to pay 4 hours a day of commuting.

The net result of this could easily be workers being required to travel to and
from a central location as a workaround, when they could have better outcomes
travelling straight from home - hurting the people you are supposedly want to
help.

~~~
salvadors
> What about a plumbing business which dispatches jobs within a 5 mile radius.
> If the employee moves 2 hours away, suddenly the company has to pay 4 hours
> a day of commuting.

As you say, if the company has a fixed office at the centre of that radius,
they can still tell the worker that their days begin when they arrive at the
office, and then the 'worktime' begins once they get there, ready to travel
out to the first customer. That's how many businesses operate anyway — and how
the business at the centre of this case used to work. The case was brought
once they closed that office down.

------
zhte415
Tangential, but related to the headline:

In China, if an employee has an accident on the way to work, the employer is
required to provide care and compensation (not liability compensation, just
regular employee compensation) just as if the accident had happened in the
workplace.

This ruling was made in 2013.

~~~
forinti
Same thing in Brazil.

------
DanBC
I'm a bit confused how they claim this has no effect on UK minimum wage
workers.

If that travel time counts towards my 48 hours max working hours why doesn't
it also count as time I should be paid for?

~~~
fennecfoxen
In programming terms: namespacing.

You have a set of activities which people do. You have validations on those
activities. To determine whether a working arrangement is legal, all
validations must pass. The UK has one set of validations. The EU has another.
Some of them check the same things.

Both the EU and UK validations make use of abstractions. One of these
abstractions they reference is a particular symbol named 'work'. However, the
symbol for 'work' is not defined in a common namespace or dictionary, but is
instead private to each ruleset. Therefore if the EU court rules that 'work'
must be defined a certain way for the purposes of EU regulations, it does not
affect the UK regulations.

If you think that's at all confusing wait until you hear about the government
of the city of London.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c)

~~~
digi_owl
that video kinda reminded me of the enclaves exclaves one.

BTW, The City even has its own police force afaik. It really is a strange
place...

------
jksmith
Start the autonomous car, let it send a "punch the clock" event to work.

Status: 1) Remote 2) in office 3) working, in route?

Additionally, only accept meetings when status is 3).

~~~
bhc3
I'm convinced way down the road (ahem...pun) that autonomous vehicles are
going to become our work spaces. We already see it with some people getting
work done on their company buses. But those are limited in terms of letting
you work fully.

In our future, you'll have your own personal space on a self-driving car. Room
for proper placement of your laptop + keyboard. Ability to loudly participate
in conference calls. Dual screens.

And this opens up home ownership possibilities. Bay Area home prices are going
through the roof. If companies want to hire people, they need to account for
housing prices. Well, why not hire people who live 2 hours away? For example,
the job may be in San Francisco (median home price $1.063 million), but the
employee lives in Roseville (media home price $372,200).

The work day starts with the 8 am commute. Our employee lets the vehicle drive
and starts working. Emails, documents, conference calls, etc. He then shows up
in the office at 10 am. Gets that key face time and benefits from those
serendipitous moments that only occur in person. Exits the office at 4:30 pm
to return home, working on the commute. Has dinner with the kids and helps
them with the homework.

One can see real possibilities for positive change once we have autonomous
vehicles.

~~~
Raphmedia
I've been thinking about this a lot.

I think that ultimately, a lot of offices are going to be replaced by virtual
reality offices. This would cut our dependance on commuting.

------
simonjgreen
This is for people without fixed offices eg travelling salespeople etc. This
is not saying your daily commute is work. The title of this submission is very
misleading

------
rockdoe
Does this apply to consultants going to a customer (where they may be for a
longer period of time)?

~~~
Cthulhu_
I've been wondering that, since I'm in the same situation. But, in my personal
situation, our contracts are generally for longer terms, so I guess it is a
fixed office - and we have a fixed HQ too. Which we don't generally visit
during our workdays though.

Even if it would apply to consultants though, I doubt anything would change.
Right now there's already laws in place here (NL), or just a company
agreement, about longer commutes, iirc any commute longer than an hour can be
written down as working hours.

~~~
rockdoe
_But, in my personal situation, our contracts are generally for longer terms,
so I guess it is a fixed office - and we have a fixed HQ too._

The issue is that you have no control over the location of these changing
"fixed" offices, so your employer is free to assign you to a customer halfway
across the country. Sounds exactly like the kind of situation this ruling is
supposed to protect against.

------
conceit
My place of work is fixed, but it's not an office. So, does this apply to me?
:)

------
bullen
No, travelling to a work today is just stupid, work from home!

~~~
coldtea
How does that work for a plumber? You fix your own plumbing?

~~~
xacaxulu
For a lot of people on Hacker News, traveling to work is stupid. Of course
electricians and plumbers must go on-site, but let's consider the general
audience here.

------
leovonl
Clickbait title.

------
supriyarao
Would love to see this implemented in Bangalore! With the traffic jams, one
could get paid for just leaving home to get to work

~~~
xwat
Haha yeah, then you would see how fast would corporations allow working
remotely (if the nature of the work makes it possible).

------
D_Alex
So... for _some_ people, the work day now starts as soon as they leave the
house. Now those with a "fixed office" can feel they are being hard done by...
I have a feeling we started sliding down a slippery slope here.

~~~
scrollaway
Your own life has not gotten worse just become someone else's life has become
better.

There are other comments explaining why this is a needed law. I'll let you
read them.

------
wavefunction
Hopefully this puts more interest among executives and managers towards
distributed/remote teams.

~~~
mhurron
Know how I know you didn't read the article?

~~~
wavefunction
I read some of the article. Did you know that? I guess you signaled that you
did not know that with your contentless comment.

------
Frozenlock
I wonder if Europeans see the vicious circle they are in.

Step 1: More job regulations.

Step 2: Employees cost more and are harder to get rid of; Businesses less
inclined to hire.

Step 3: Jobs are hard to get, so employees ask for more security from the
government.

Repeat.

~~~
Animats
Like Germany, unemployment rate 4.7% and strong job protections?

~~~
Frozenlock
No, more like all the countries that aren't Germany.

Or do you think it's a breeze seeking a job in France (unemployment ~10%),
Italy (unemployment ~13%), Spain (unemployment ~20%), Greece (unemployment
~25%)...

There's many others if you want to take a look.
[http://www.statista.com/statistics/268830/unemployment-
rate-...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/268830/unemployment-rate-in-eu-
countries/)

~~~
bildung
Please take a look at the following graph:
[https://sturdyblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-
workin...](https://sturdyblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-working-
hours.jpg)

 _All_ your listed countries have higher working hours than Germany. In fact,
the working hours in Greece are _50% higher_ than in Germany.

Annual working hours are highly correlated with unemployment rate. Note I'm
not saying that a _causes_ b, but the correlation is obvious.

On the other hand, there is no empirical evidence of workers' rights
protection causing unemployment. That narrative often gets repeated, but that
doesn't make it true.

~~~
Frozenlock
> Annual working hours are highly correlated with unemployment rate. Note I'm
> not saying that a causes b, but the correlation is obvious.

Interesting... but like you said, it's just a correlation. Could as much be
that people are less likely to work many hours when there's full employment,
or when a country is richer.

> On the other hand, there is no empirical evidence of workers' rights
> protection causing unemployment. That narrative often gets repeated, but
> that doesn't make it true.

As a business owner, every additional regulation regarding employees is
increasing my cost. (And it doesn't matter if I would have agreed anyway with
what the law says; I still have to waste time learning it, more paperwork,
less flexibility.) So I know that the more regulation there is in this field,
the less _I_ 'm inclined to hire. It's not a narrative, that's _my_ reality.

~~~
bildung
_> As a business owner, every additional regulation regarding employees is
increasing my cost._

My point was that it doesn't matter if every other business in your industry
bears the same burden, too. Your competitive position stays the same. No
profit opportunities are lost.

~~~
hwstar
This. There is an American mindset which needs to change. We have a lot of
businesses complaining about regulations, yet other countries with more
regulation seem to conduct business in a profitable manner. In fact, it could
be argued that the businesses operating in a more regulated environment, are
probably more robust than their American counterparts because the regulations
add stability and reduced uncertainty.

A lot of American business owners complain that their business is "hanging on
by a thread". This is because they are operating at the lowest energy state
which provides little safety margin for failure. If there were stronger
regulations in America, then fragile business models would not be able to
attract investment.

