A new ruling by the European Court of Justice has ruled that for employees without a fixed working base, travelling time should count towards their time worked. Could this affect your business?
The trade unions have welcomed this recent decision as it should mean more money for people who travel to appointments. That is being paid for work time that has never been considered by employers previously. For employees with a fixed place of work, this modification has no effect. However, this change may have a significant outcome on employees where mobile working is common practice. The ruling states that travel from an employees home to their first appointment and their return journey home should count towards any time worked.
So this is what you may need to do in your business:
- Review your working schedules to ensure employees’ first and last appointments are close to their home.
- Consider the working time directive – will your employees working days now have additional hours included thus taking them over the 48-hour Don’t get caught out and be in breach of the working time regulations.
The purpose of the working time regulations is to protect workers from working long hours. It is to ensure that workers don’t feel obliged to work more than an average of 48 hours a week and to provide a rest of at least 11 hours in any 24 hours. So bear this in mind if employing mobile workers.