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European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

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Re: European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

#41

Post by adwn »

zaarn wrote: post #23
sonnyblarney wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.…

> 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?

Re: European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

#42

Post by kerng »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #36
holstvoogd wrote: post #32

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…

> 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.

You can work Sunday, but weekend work typically needs approval as it is compensated higher.

Re: European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

#43

Post by sweeeety »

maaaats wrote: post #38
holstvoogd wrote: post #32

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…

It's a common theme here on HN when it comes to worker's rights and unions. Being a one-percenter where companies bend over backwards to cater to you, it's easy to dismiss these things.

Not my experience in Europe though. My last two employers here constantly over promised (e.g.: unlimited vacations/parental leave, flexible hours, work from home, etc) and really really under delivered. I would rather have things set in stone first nowadays b/c the mindset of most managers here are still not ready for those.

Re: European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

#44

Post by michaelmrose »

adwn wrote: post #11
pergadad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 hone…

We have this in the US. 99.5% of values are collected by a computer and therefore recorded accurately.

I've never seen anyone clock in and out of a pee break people only clock in for the day out for lunch back from lunch and out to go home.

Employees are strongly encouraged not to put in made up values that happen to result in them being paid more money on pain of termination and or prosecution.

Employers are strongly encouraged on pain of getting sued not to put in made up values that don't reflect the work the employee actually did.

People STILL do cheat but having the legal expectation of maintaining an auditable record normalizes accurate time keeping and makes it hard for smaller fish to make targets by cheating as they have to actively forge records and encourage behavior that is obviously erroneous.

Think of being asked to help out with additional work after your shift vs being asked to explicitly clock out THEN get back to work. Its a clear and obvious line made explicit by time keeping practices.

Of course record keeping is necessary but not sufficient. You do have to be willing to enforce the law but this would be doubly hard with lax or non existent record keeping.

On the overall I cannot even imagine how this could be deemed onerous. On net someone that works 8 hours spends perhaps 1 minute clocking in and out. It could even happen via an app on the employees phone or at their computer.

Re: European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

#45

Post by rat9988 »

adwn wrote: post #41
zaarn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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?

How many European countries don't do random control?

Re: European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

#46

Post by 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.

Re: European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

#47

Post by kerng »

JanSt wrote: post #17

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 a…

Do you get paid per hour or a lump sum each week/month?

Re: European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

#48

Post by michaelmrose »

adwn wrote: post #41
zaarn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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?

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.

Re: European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

#49

Post by JanSt »

kerng wrote: post #47
JanSt wrote: post #17

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 a…

Do you get paid per hour or a lump sum each week/month?

Lump sum every month, 38h / week

Re: European Court of Justice: EU employers must track working time in detail

#50

Post by lima165 »

pergadad wrote: post #9
ovi256 wrote: post #2

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 re…

This is about labor rights. If you're paid for 40h your employer should not be able to press you to do more without compensation. Easy as that. If the added working time has much value they'll find a way to compensate. This way it simply means that you can't force a fastfood worker to do closing shift and then still clean after they've done their work. Outside of the pure "pair of hands" work there is a lot of eviden…

This is not about labour rights. In Spain at least, it is about the government making cash via labour taxes (as an employer, you must subtract a percentage from the employee's wage to pay for social security). As the taxes are so high, many employers resort to hire employees officially for 4-6h and under the table they pay them the remaining time free of taxes. Most companies here have less than 10 employees, they just can't cope with the high taxes, and the alternative is not hiring at all.

Now this new law in Spain means nothing for employees. The govt just forces employers to have an accurate time log they can inspect at any time to make sure they are paying labour taxes. THEY WONT CHECK AT ALL THAT THE EMPLOYEES ARE BEING PAYED THAT NUMBER OF HOURS. Guess what, exactly 4h will appear for every employee in the log. There is no official approved system for time tracking, it's up to the employer, with even an excel being accepted, so it is absolutely manipulable by the employer.

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