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EU Court: Commuting to Customer Sites Counts as Work
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.
...exactly like it should be.
Someone literate appears to have hijacked Joe_Dragon's account.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
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.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
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)
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?
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!
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Case 1: I work every day in an office 20 miles away (or 100 yards away) from my home. I pay for the journey out of my own pocket and don't get paid as working (in some countries, like Germany, the cost of travel is tax deductible).
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.
The EU is already lagging in the developed world in productivity
http://images.forbes.com/media...
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.
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...
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Workers having no money and time to spend it will put those businesses out of business.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Like all other worker rights, it will just mean slightly lower pay rises over the next few years as the employers recover the costs.
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.
This ruling has nothing at all to do with worker's paycheck. The ruling only relates to the working time directive -- the maximum hours someone can be required to work -- not whether that time counts towards pay.
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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.
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.
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 ships, those things are all made in Korea (which incidentally also makes some nice cars, a lot better than Fords and Chevys). After years of crap though, America finally is making some really nice, and innovative cars.... except they're made by an upstart who the auto dealerships and the state governments are all trying to shut down, because somehow it's "unfair" to sell your products directly to consumers instead of going through a legislated middleman who adds cost and only gives customers horrifically bad service and unethical sales tactics in exchange for higher prices. Yet the politicians who push these laws claim they're the "business friendly" party who's interested in a "free market".
Seriously, are Americans REALLY this fucking stupid in general?
As an American myself, I assure you the answer to that is "yes".
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).
You forgot baby labor. Once a brat hits four he could be put to use in the mines. There are actually right wingers who want this sort of crap. And they are so very lost they don't even know how messed up they are. Cheap labor will do nothing for America. That tune played out long ago. These days my machines must work cheaper than your machines is the real deal. Can a Chinese production robot do a better job or faster job than an American assembly robot? Human's are getting rare on factory floors. Machines take more and more agricultural jobs every day. Driving for a living already received its death notice. Teaching is falling to automation. Yet the really dumb can't see it coming at all. How many parents on this thread have a kid who takes some school courses with no teacher other than a computer?
Is this change going to result in reduced traffic & emissions while simultaneously discouraging people from living outside of the cities?
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.
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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 to load/unload. Now, on paper that French guy is doing the work of five New Yorkers, but he's not actually more productive in the traditional sense. It's just that it was too expensive to hire Parisians to do a job that could be done by machine.
"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?
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.