EU Court: Commuting to Customer Sites Counts as Work 241
Joe_Dragon writes with news that the European Court of Justice has issued a ruling (PDF) saying that workers who have to commute to see customers, but don't have a "fixed or habitual place of work," must have their transit time at the beginning and end of the day count as working time. In other words, driving to your normal office every day doesn't count toward your paycheck, but leaving home in the morning to go visit a client or customer at your employer's request does. This added commute time also counts toward weekly labor limits — EU regulations for working conditions prohibit employers from making their employees work more than 48 hours a week on average. The court said, Given that traveling is an integral part of being such a worker, the place of work of that worker cannot be reduced to the physical areas of his work on the premises of the employer’s customers. The fact that the workers begin and finish the journeys at their homes stems directly from the decision of their employer to abolish the regional offices and not from the desire of the workers themselves.
This is... (Score:5, Insightful)
...exactly like it should be.
What's going on? (Score:4, Informative)
Someone literate appears to have hijacked Joe_Dragon's account.
Makes perfect sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Without this it's possible for someone to spend 80 hours working during the week and only get paid for half that much or less. When someone is following their employer's instructions and carrying out their job duties they're at work and on the clock, it's that simple. Someone who works principally in an office and travels irregularly occasionally has to deal with a special situation. Someone whose principal employment involves travelling to and from various job sites should have that travel counted as part of their work day.
I interviewed for a job they not paying mileage (Score:3)
I interviewed for a job at this one office and they where not even paying full mileage to customers sites or even the tolls to get to them.
They said we don't have to pay the number of miles it takes to get to our main office to your home each way when going to differnt customers sites from your home most of the week. They said that you where scheduled came into the office one a week (other then maybe times where customers sites needed a visit that day)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I interviewed for a job they not paying mileage (Score:5, Insightful)
When I go into the office I regularly work in, it's my choice where I live. I can choose to live an hour away if I want, or five minutes away. Now, there may be other tradeoffs in that, but it's my choice.
On the other hand, if I'm being sent to different customer/client sites, then I really can't choose to live closer or farther from work. I live where I live, and they require me to travel there as part of my duties.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You can move to 5 minutes from the office instead of 30 minutes. When they get rid of the office and you have to spend 30+ minutes driving in various directions that choice is gone.
Note that this ruling is about businesses that don't have an office or another way to look at it is your home is the office.
Re: (Score:3)
Until we get all the way to xaria law (sharia law for Christians) staying with your current spouse employed on the wrong side of town also counts as a personal preference.
So many things can be fixed once we complete the sharing economy transition to Uber Madison.
Re: (Score:2)
It can get tricky if you go into the office and then to a client site and then home (or vice versa) but where I work they've got a pretty good system for figuring that all out.
For me this is not tricky at all. I will expense any miles that are greater than my normal daily commute. If my normal round-trip to my office and back home is 20 miles, I will expense any mileage that requires me to drive more than my normal 20 miles in a given day.
Re: (Score:2)
The worst part is that one of the professions that will be most affected by this is healthcare, and the bosses are already saying that it makes it unaffordable. They say they can't afford to pay nurses who visit the elderly and disabled at home any more, and can't pay then less because it would put them below minimum wage.
It's pretty bad when we already pay the people who look after the vulnerable in our society minimum wage. How little we value that care.
Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Or maybe, home healthcare should be a public service paid by the whole community through taxes proportional to their income? Just saying...
Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you see a difference between being old and running a business? "Well, if you can't afford to be old, you know, you've made choices, you didn't have to be old, and yet now you want other people to look after you. I'm sorry, I'm not seeing the return on investment here. You've depreciated beyond economic repair."
Re: (Score:3)
So you're suggesting a more expensive option? Here in my Province where the government pretty well pays for both, they really want seniors staying at home as long as possible as they've done the numbers and it is cheaper to have home care then care centers, at least to a point. (Of course if someone needs 24hr care it is cheaper to put them in a care center)
Re: (Score:3)
In the US, at least, insurance companies try to keep you at home for as long as they can. I know a couple that has some kind of old folks home insurance. The company sends cleaners around to clean their house, and sends a nurse by every couple weeks to check their vitals and make sure they're taking medicines correctly. That's a whole lot cheaper than an elder facility, which typically runs about $7
Logical (Score:5, Insightful)
If you know your place of employment, commuting is up to you - you can live close by if you prefer. But if you have to go where your employer tells you every day, commuting is on them.
Re: (Score:2)
So how does that work when doing 6 months projects on-site? You know where the job is, but it doesn't make sense to move every 6 months.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
If you know your place of employment, commuting is up to you - you can live close by if you prefer.
Although I agree that this makes sense and it's probably one of the many reasons that the labor laws are this way, there are plenty of situations where this is just not possible. If you're a housekeeper, work at a fast food joint, etc... in an expensive area then chances are there is not going to be affordable accommodations nearby. I've heard stories of people having 4 hour commutes via public transportation to work a 4 hour shift at minimum wage. Making employers start pay when you leave your home also
Re: (Score:2)
Employers would have a hard time discriminating since they won't find anyone in an expensive area who is willing or able to work for minimum wage.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm always skeptical of those stories. Minimum wage jobs aren't that hard to come by. Why would you commute to a minimum wage job hours away when you could get one within a few miles? I have to believe in most instances this is a case of someone who isn't legally allowed to work travelling to the nearest job where the employer is willing to look the other way.
Re: (Score:2)
Does that mean no more minimum wage jobs in city centers?
Re: (Score:2)
Not if you live in most parts of England, UK, housing is simply too expensive for the majority of people to just move to where their job is - typically in the expensive part of the cities.
Making employers pay for miles commuted would result in a massive CO2 output reduction, traffic reduction and would encourage employers to locate where people live rather than in the middle of the city.
Re: (Score:2)
You can live nearer if you can afford it. A lot of low paying jobs screw the employee by making them commute a long way.
Re: (Score:2)
If your employer isn't happy, you can always commute to their closest office THEN get paid to commute back to the client. Keeping a local office sure is cheaper than paying for 4 hours commutes every day.
Makes perfect sense to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, did a court just make a completely reasonable ruling that makes total sense and is fair to all involved?
Gosh, what has this world come to?
If I call up my employee and say, "hey, I need you to go to XYZ customer's office and do ABC", then clearly from that point until they get back to where they were (home), they are "on the clock".
I honestly can't imagine doing it any other way, maybe I'm weird?
Re: (Score:2)
They can put you on salary and pay you like $40K to work like 40-60 hours a week and your are on the clock 24/7
Re: (Score:2)
They can put you on salary and pay you like $40K to work like 40-60 hours a week and your are on the clock 24/7
Nope. There's a very narrow definition of exempt workers in the EU for management and extremely independent positions. You need to have the freedom to decide the scope, location, duration and content of your work, for the management side the power of delegation is crucial otherwise the other requirements are even stronger. In short, your average white collar labor job must obey regulations on working hours and must pay overtime when certain limits are exceeded.
Re: (Score:2)
No, not total sense.
Obviously, leaving your house for the customer's premise constitutes 'starting work', and being 'on the clock'. Wait, what clock? Do you carry the employer's timeclock in your car?
No, you're on salary. The clock premise is a little disingenuous from the get-go, isn't it? You're simply expected to work around 8 hours a day, 40 a week. Sometimes weekends, depending on the current project. If you don't get comp time for that later btw, then your job sucks. That's the reality for 99% of trav
Re: (Score:2)
And btw, how is it fair that they get paid for driving to work and I don't?
Complaining about "that guy over there makes more money than I do for the same job" doesn't mean that guy is being paid too much.
It means you're being paid too little.
And your entire post revolves around the fact that you didn't RTFA.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:2)
Wel
Re: (Score:2)
EU courts make a lot of good, logical decisions. Some news outlets would have you believe otherwise, but it's true.
Interesting ruling... (Score:5, Interesting)
Case 2: My office is 20 miles away (or 100 yards away) from my home. When I get there, my boss sends me to a client anywhere in the country (within reason). I pay the journey to the office out of my own pocket and don't get paid for working for the time. The company pays for my journey to the client and pays the driving time as work time.
Case 3: There is no office. I drive from home to a client and back. This ruling effectively says that this situation is handled exactly the same as if my office was in the home next door, which is entirely logical.
Re: (Score:3)
My office is 20 miles away (or 100 yards away)
I appreciate that you're trying to use imperial units for us Americans, but there's a huge difference between 20 miles and 100 yards. Maybe you should just stick to metric: we understand it here.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's a simple solution for the employer to this - open an office in slovakia and tell the employee to come into the office first. Now their commute from Spain doesn't count.
This seems sensible to me. Employers can no longer abuse employees by sending them all over the country on their own dime.
Re: (Score:3)
I double dare you to drive from Slovakia to Spain in only 6 hours.
Workarounds (Score:2)
Like any law or ruling, there are certainly loopholes or workarounds. An obvious one would be to obtain a [small] office near/in the customer premises. Then the long commute is to this assigned business office, with a short hop to the customer.
The real problem is you cannot legislate morality or fairmindedness. A market economy can balanece things to the extent competition operates. An unfair employer loses employees (a big deal in IT). However, the EU is especially keen to entrench "employee rights" a
Re: (Score:2)
I guess you'll be mortified to learn that the law works the same way in the U.S.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's not a "workaround", that's just a different situation. In particular in that situation, the employee can simply move close to the office.
Re: Workarounds (Score:2)
Two problems with that.
1. Within the EU the home office of the worker can't change without proper procedure, often with unions involved.
2. If the office is changed then the travel is usually tax-deductible instead, so the employee may even benefit from it.
Summary is wrong (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, because the ruling doesn't apply to pay at all, only to maximum permissible hours -- essentially a health and safety thing.
The unions are pushing for the hours to count for pay as well, but that would take a new ruling.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I had this debate with my employer (Score:3)
I work for a SMB consultancy and we had this debate concerning mileage reimbursement. None of the engineers had an office presence at our small office -- we worked from home or at client locations. I started when the company was quite small and the owners were willing to pay for ALL mileage (except from home to office and back trips), partly because many customers were required to pay a trip charge of $25 so the owner was already making a profit on trips under about 50 miles.
At some point as they became more sophisticated and were worried they were running into a tax liability for mileage reimbursements not covered by IRS rules. They wanted to cut any reimbursements involving trips to/from home and client locations.
Since we didn't have any choice involving customers and a significant minority were distant (ie, round trips of 70 miles), I made a stink about it. I argued that tax liability wasn't the issue -- whether or not they were able to deduct our mileage reimbursement as a tax deduction wasn't my concern.
The business model was on site IT support. Asking me to bear 100% of the cost of supporting their business model isn't remotely equitable -- they need to provide compensation for the use my capital (car) in their business model. The alternative is they provide me with a car to fulfill their business model, which I guarantee will be more expensive than a mileage reimbursement. Plus, they are getting trip charges from the customer, so it's not like they're not already exceeding their cost to me in travel compensation.
Surprisingly, they bought this argument, at least for me as a long-serving worker who had basically received this compensation for several years.
Re: (Score:2)
So it would make sense for European companies to adopt rules and practices that are similar to the leaders on that chart, say the United States? I wonder what the rules are in the US for compensating employees' time traveling to workplaces that are not the regular place of business...
Re: (Score:2)
Why ask that question.
Why not ask why they all don't adopt Greece's system it's a European nation after all.
Re: (Score:2)
Greece has no 'system' ...
Re:Self inflicted damage (Score:5, Informative)
In the USA, generally, hourly employees whose travel is required for the job must be paid for their travel time, with the exception of home to work (and work to home).
http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/w... [dol.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
The EU is tied second with Canada in that graph. By the way, it's not just productivity that counts, worker satisfaction and output quality are just as important. You can hardly claim that European products are shitty, they're just polished with a different mindset, and damn expensive.
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly. What kind of moron would pick a Chevy over a BMW or Mercedes? It's obvious which society is better at producing quality products, and it isn't the USA.
It's not just cars either; where do all the nicest ships come from? Multi-billion-dollar cruise ships are made in northern European countries, not the US. The US actually has no industrial ability to produce a ship like the Norwegian Epic, yet Europe cranks those things out left and right. That's pretty sad. Or, if you want tankers and cargo sh
Re: (Score:2)
Sure... if price is no object.
Re: (Score:2)
I would pick a Ford over either in terms of reliability, cost of ownership, and value.
I wouldn't. I even thought about looking at Fords recently because I was in the market for a new car, and I came across a deluge of reviews complaining about how unreliable the automatic (DSG) transmission was in the Focus and how they'd never buy another Ford again because the way Ford handled it was miserable. Add in the horrifically bad MyFordTouch systems (and on the GM side, the whole ignition-switch fiasco and cov
Re: (Score:2)
Go look at actual reliability reports for Mercedes, it barely edges over average for reliability (which is still better than Cadillac but far short of GM), which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the cost of repairs. And Ford, while some are quite good, some are downright scary to own and others that are decent but are ridiculously expensive when things eventually do go wrong. Chevy actually edges them
Re: Self inflicted damage (Score:2)
I'd pick a Toyota Corolla if I wanted just an ass-hauler to work.
Re:Self inflicted damage (Score:5, Insightful)
You are so right!
Let us abolish vacation time, sick time, maternity leave, weekends, nights, and all those other ridiculous "personal" things.
The moment you are done with your education you are a worker drone and need to work 24/7/365 for the rest of your life with no compensation other than the most basic necessities to not die TOO quickly.
Worker's rights? Hell no, those are anti-capitalistic!
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Name one.
Re: (Score:2)
Abolishing legal requirements to provide those benefits is not the same as abolishing those benefits. After all, most of those benefits were not imposed by government, they were pioneered by businesses voluntarily.
Re: (Score:3)
Voluntarily, to the tune of, "Either you guys set something up yourselves that is acceptable, or we will do it for you." That's the kind of incentive that lets a business be nice to its employees; otherwise they just need to all agree that no job offers a work week lower than 70 hours so there can be no shopping around for the workers.
Re: (Score:2)
No. It is illegal to spend more than 48 hours with ONE employer. If you really want to work 80 hour week, get a second job.
Even if you could work 80 hours for one employer, you will not get ahead long term. You will burn out, you will take more sick leave, your work quality will be much poorer. Oh and if you keep doing this voluntarily, it will not be respected: It will be expected. Not to mention what effect it will have on the rest of your life.
Re: (Score:2)
art 3 there must daily rest of 11 consecutive hours per 24-hour period
art 4 a rest period for every six hours, set by legislation or collective agreement
art 5 weekly rest of 24 hours uninterrupted, on top of the daily rest in art 3, but derogation justifiable for technical, organisational or work reasons
art 6 (a) member states must ensure weekly working time is limited by law, or collective agreement(b) average working time should not exceed 48 hours for each 7 day period
art 22 ‘miscellaneous’ (1) individual opt out for art 6 where (a) the worker agrees (b) no detriment for not agreeing (c) records kept up to date (d) authorities kept informed (e) information given (2) three week transitional provision (3) inform Commission
Eg If offered overtime on a regular basis, that is fine. The company just cannot expect you to do it, nor punish you for refusing.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh huh heh heh. He said "get head" (Score:2)
Prostitutes or fancy meals must be very expensive where you live.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you measure productivity?
Re:Self inflicted damage (Score:4, Interesting)
The EU is already lagging in the developed world in productivity
http://images.forbes.com/media... [forbes.com]
Why not put a few businesses out of business and raise the cost for those remaining.
An amusing graph certainly. I think people in the US work more than 6% more in terms of hours, and and in many places in Europe it's actually illegal to work overtime without compensation (aka, multiplier to pay or extra time off). That on top of generally having more than 6% more time off due to government mandated vacation requirements.
I think a more significant measure is productivity / hours worked, because especially in the non-manufacturing societies (or specialist manufacturing) the west works in, killing/firing/replacing your skilled work force is a bad idea in the long term.
Hours != productive (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
The way economists measure labor productivity it's nothing more than in indicator of labor costs.
Years ago The Economist had a good example in an article on the subject. It included the example of one of the major hotel chains with a hotel in New York and Paris. I don't remember which one. The hotel in New York had five people washing dishes, because it was cheaper than buying an industrial dishwasher (including financing and maintenance). In Paris, they bought the dishwasher and hired a single person
Re: (Score:3)
Workers having no money and time to spend it will put those businesses out of business.
Re: (Score:3)
Gosh, it's almost as if there's someone more important in life than fucking work for a corporate overlord.
Seriously, are Americans REALLY this fucking stupid in general?
P.S. In terms of productivity per hour or even per dollar, chances are that the EU wins. But let your employer brainwash you into working, if you wish.
Re:Self inflicted damage (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously, are Americans REALLY this fucking stupid in general?
As an American myself, I assure you the answer to that is "yes".
Re: (Score:2)
"uhm, what was that middle thing, again?
and don't EVER call me stupid. ever."
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, the difference is much simpler. Europeans by and large view themselves as wage slaves at the mercy of big corporations and governments, with little autonomy or control over their lives. So, if they want to work more or less, it requires government intervention. Americans, by and large, still view themselves as autonomous actors and their labor as something valuable that employers compete for.
Re: (Score:2)
You might notice that working hours have nothing to do with productivity, otherwise Japan would lead the graph you just posted.
Re: (Score:2)
That chart is from 2007 to 2009!!!
Where is the rest? Talk about cherry picking. And EU is 2nd after US in the chart.
And employment is down in the US during that period, easy to sack a million people short term and claim productivity is up, but it's a quick buck at the expense of long term profit.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.voxeu.org/sites/def... [voxeu.org]
Try again
Re: (Score:2)
And it's an opt-out. You can't be forced to do it, nor do you have to do anything special in order to operate within the specified bounds, as that''s the "expected norm", if you like.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This subject is work. (Score:5, Insightful)
What it means is that business processes will change because they finally have to pay for another part of "work" rather than get it for free.
Re: This subject is work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how companies want to bill you for travel time for on site services and yet they think you should travel to work for free.
The real welfare queens in our society are employers, and always have been.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's also about people like nurses that travel to visit patients in their homes, who are being paid a salary for the hours they work, but in some cases not for the hours spent travelling to the first patient and from the last patient. If the company is not paying for the time spent travelling to the first job and from the last, there's no incentive to optimise the routes so they start/finish close to home.
Re: This subject is work. (Score:2)
Travel cost to workplace is tax-deductible in some countries.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Welfare" refers to receiving government money for no work.
When employers "expect" you to commute to work "for free", that's not "welfare"; it's the contract you negotiated with your employer. If you don't like the conditions or the salary, don't take the contract. You are a legally competent adult, aren't you? And you do think that your work is valuable?
And when society has to pick up the slack in government benefits for the employees of employers cutting costs like this, constantly? What then?
Re: (Score:2)
And when society has to pick up the slack in government benefits for the employees of employers cutting costs like this, constantly? What then?
Then society picks up the tab. They made the choice, they get to live by the consequences of that choice.
Re: (Score:2)
But that doesn't change the question of whether or not they *can* pick up the tab. Municipalities are imploding under the weight of impossible to keep promises. Just look at the disaster that is Chicago.
Then don't promise things that can't be kept. I see this as creating a cost and then passing it on to the employer. And this is a typical straw on a camel's back situation. It's not an isolated passing of cost on to employers, but part of a mass of ongoing costs added to businesses. Eventually something will break.
You can't just make recommendations based on some moral inner-voice that makes you feel good.
How about making recommendations for pragmatic reasons, like for the future of your society?
Re:This subject is work. (Score:4, Insightful)
Like all other worker rights, it will just mean slightly lower pay rises over the next few years as the employers recover the costs.
You're assuming every business will be affected equally. In reality most businesses will be totally unaffected while the few businesses that were abusing this (house cleaning companies for instance, maybe not the example you were expecting) will finally have to compensate their employees correctly, and probably won't be able to compensate just by freezing the salaries for a few years (e.g. because of minimum wage laws).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When you do a wedding shoot, do you not bill for the total time that it takes or do you just bill for the time that you are at the wedding? Or in other words, do you charge more for a shoot that's further away then one that is closer?
And of course, if you had an assistant, would you expect them to travel for free, whether it is 15 minutes or 2 hours to the wedding.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is this change going to result in reduced traffic & emissions while simultaneously discouraging people from living outside of the cities?
Re: (Score:2)
If a more distant company can't remain competitive when charging more to cover commuting costs, why do you think that closer-by employers would be able to attract those more distant employees? If distance is the issue, it impacts all parts of the equation unless someone is willing to move.
Most of the time you have people in town A working in town B while people in town B are doing the same job in town A, or are unemployed because the job is already taken by someone in town A. If this forces some rationalization it will be a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So does this mean the employers would otherwise pay more than they can get away with and still maintain sufficient workforce, presumably out of the goodness and generosity of their hearts? Because I'm pretty sure shareholders wouldn't like that.
But hey, the faster people are convinced there's no way up for them under the current system, the faster we can get the next wave of c
Re: (Score:2)
These are not companies just barely making it. They are making a bunch of profits from doing this, and they hold to the idea that "anything we do to increase our profits is fine".
That's how the argument for this dysfunction spiral goes. Any businesses which survive were making a bunch of profits. And the ones that weren't, we didn't want anyway. Then that creates unemployed workers and lower demand for labor. Which in turn creates a race to the bottom for employers who still survive and are still trying to maintain that profit. Then a new round of poorly thought-out regulation happens, with more businesses shoved towards the edge of bankruptcy and the society sinks even deeper into
Re: (Score:2)
"Seems fair."
Really? So replacement bank tellers, who work at 2 different banks get paid for their 100 mile commute to 1 bank and their 101 mile commute to the other bank, while the resident tellers have to drive their 100 miles for free?
But I guess this is one question that yells for a car analogy. :-)