The European Court of Justice has ruled that domestic workers must have a record of their working hours.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled on the case of a full-time domestic worker who challenged her dismissal before the Spanish courts. In its ruling, issued on Thursday, the CJEU recalled that domestic employers are obliged to set up a system to record the daily working hours of domestic workers. This record is primarily to ensure accurate counting of hours worked and to enable employees to exercise their rights, especially in cases of dismissal.
The case in question concerns a worker whose dismissal was declared unfair by the Spanish courts. As a result, the employers were ordered to pay her the amounts corresponding to the holidays not taken and the extra pay due.
However, the spanish judge who decided the case found that the worker had not sufficiently demonstrated the hours worked and the salary claimed. He argued that current spanish regulations exempted certain employers, such as family homes, from the obligation to record the actual working time of their employees. Moreover, it pointed out that the worker's claim could not be based solely on the employers' failure to provide the relevant time records.
The CJEU, nonetheless, emphasises in its ruling that in a 2019 judgment it already declared unlawful Spanish legislation and its participation by national courts, which allowed employers to avoid the obligation to record the daily working hours of their workers. This reminder reinforces the importance of complying with european rules on labour rights and time recording, including in the field of domestic work.
BACKGROUND TO THE CASE
The ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) concerns the case of a full-time domestic worker who challenged her dismissal before the Spanish courts.
That dismissal was declared unfair, which obliged his employers to pay him the amounts corresponding to the holidays not taken and the extra pay due.
However, the Spanish judge in charge of the case concluded that the worker had not sufficiently demonstrated the hours worked and the salary claimed. He further noted that the claim could not be based solely on the failure of the two employers to provide time records, since Spanish law exempts certain employers, such as family homes, from the obligation to record the actual working time of their employees.
In these circumstances, and considering that the employee's appeal raised doubts as to the compatibility of the national legislation with EU law, the Spanish court decided to refer the matter to the CJEU for a ruling.
SPANISH REGULATIONS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION IN THE COURTS INFRINGES THE EUROPEAN DIRECTIVE.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has recalled that, in a 2019 judgment, it already declared unlawful Spanish legislation which exempted employers from recording the daily working hours of their workers, including domestic workers. According to the CJEU, this interpretation infringes the European Directive on the organisation of working time.
The CJEU has pointed out that this practice deprives domestic workers of the possibility of objectively and reliably determining the hours worked, thus affecting their employment rights. Although it admits that sectoral particularities may be established, such as exceptions for overtime, these must not deprive the guarantees of European legislation of their content, something which it is up to the spanish courts to assess.
Moreover, the CJEU stresses that, being a feminised sector, the risks of indirect discrimination on grounds of sex must be considered, unless there are objective justifications, which the Spanish authorities will also have to analyse.