On 13 January 2022, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has delivered a preliminary ruling concerning certain aspects of the organisation of working time (https://bit.ly/34etsNp). More specifically, in the case at hand C-514/20 (Koch Personaldienstleistungen), the ECJ has stated that provisions of a collective agreement, according to which the period of paid annual leave taken by the worker is not to be taken into account when calculating the overtime pay violate EU legislation.
The German collective agreement at case stipulated that in months with 23 working days and more than 184 hours of work, workers are entitled to an additional allowance for overtime of 25%. For determining the working days, the employer would only consider the actual worked hours, but not the time corresponding to the annual leave taken by the workers.
The judges in Luxembourg underlined that such regulation could prevent the worker from taking paid annual leave in the month in which he has performed overtime. However, the aim of the right to annual paid leave is to grant the employees with time to rest in order to protect their safety and health. Any other national/internal provision which may come to discourage the employees to take their annual leave is considered contrary to the EU law.
Note: Although the main dispute is based on the legal provisions applicable to labour relations in Germany and relates more to the procedure applicable to temporary employment agencies, as a collective labour agreement is at issue, this ECJ decision becomes mandatory for labour relations in the entire European Union. Consequently, even Romanian employers have to reconsider any practice or omission that may potentially deter a worker from taking his or her annual leave.
This article was initially published on 27 January 2022 by our Romanian member firm Suciu I The Employment Law Firm. For questions on this ruling or any other employment-related questions, please contact Andreea Suciu, Managing Partner of the firm.
