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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

#21

Post by JanSt »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #19
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…

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.

I'm not a contractor, I'm actually tracking the time I'm working.

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

#22

Post by 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.

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

#23

Post by zaarn »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #19
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…

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. If start and end of work time are accurately tracked then you can sue them for not paying you overtime.

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

#24

Post by sonnyblarney »

JanSt wrote: post #21
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.

I'm not a contractor, I'm actually tracking the time I'm working.

"At least 2 hours are added to my timesheet, even if I solve the problem in 5 minutes,"

You explicitly stated you'd get tracked for 2 hours for 5 minutes of work.

This differential - which you must have brought up for a reason - is specifically not what the law is trying to address.

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

#25

Post by alkonaut »

adwn wrote: post #8
panpanna wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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…

I just have one break (lunch) and for tracking and internal billing, and for knowing whether I'm ahead or behind on my flexible working time (I'm expected to do 40h and I have a buffer that can't go above +15h or below -15h) I punch in and out in the morning, for lunch, and when I leave. On some days I don't bother or I forget, and instead enter, as you say "plausible but made up" values. But the important thing is this: The flex time buffer is visible to my employer. If I do just a few late evenings or a sunday session because of some problem with a deployment, say - then It's understood that I'll come in by noon on monday, or take friday off. It's not expected that I do 40h of normal time AND that sunday firefighting. I can't see any problem with this or why it would be onerous or oberly bureaucratic.

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

#26

Post by 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?

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

#27

Post by JanSt »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #24
JanSt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a contractor, I'm actually tracking the time I'm working.

"At least 2 hours are added to my timesheet, even if I solve the problem in 5 minutes," You explicitly stated you'd get tracked for 2 hours for 5 minutes of work. This differential - which you must have brought up for a reason - is specifically not what the law is trying to address.

You should read up on the ruling. Every country has to implement it's own law. It's allowed to include specific regulations on these corner cases.

(FYI, I'm still tracking the exact time, but the time I have to work gets reduced from 38 to 36 hours)

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

#28

Post by phoe-krk »

mar77i wrote: post #26

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 i…

> 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.

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

#29

Post by usrusr »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #24
JanSt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a contractor, I'm actually tracking the time I'm working.

"At least 2 hours are added to my timesheet, even if I solve the problem in 5 minutes," You explicitly stated you'd get tracked for 2 hours for 5 minutes of work. This differential - which you must have brought up for a reason - is specifically not what the law is trying to address.

That differential is also specifically not what the ruling is trying to prevent.

What's off the table with this ruling is that a timesheet does not exist, because "we're all friends here, we trust our employees (to work themselves to exhaustion out of fear)"

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

#30

Post by 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.

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