The Supreme Court has ruled that it is at the discretion of the competent national court to assess whether periods of stand-by time are working time. In doing so, the court should apply Romanian law as interpreted in the light of ECJ case law.

The Norwegian Supreme Court concludes that time spent on a journey ordered by the employer, to and from a place other than the employee’s fixed or habitual place of work, should be considered working time within the meaning of the statutory provisions implementing the Working Time Directive (2003/88/EC). This ruling takes into account the Advisory Opinion of the EFTA Court.

The Oporto Court of Appeal held that the employee’s availability 24 hours per day, 6 days per week, breaches the employee’s right to rest. However, such breach does not qualify the availability periods as overtime. The Court also found that the continuous use of a GPS system breached the employee’s right to privacy.

In its follow-up judgment to the ECJ’s preliminary ruling in the Hälvä case (C-175/16), the Finnish Supreme Court has held that ‘relief parents’ relieving foster parents in a child protection association on the latter’s holidays fall within the scope of the Finnish Working Hours Act even though the work was performed in the homes provided by the association for the children to live in. Therefore, the relief parents were entitled to the rights guaranteed by the Act (subject to the fact that some of their claims had expired).

The Court of Appeal has confirmed that discrimination arising from disability had occurred when an employer dismissed an employee for misconduct which was connected to the employee’s disability, even though the employer had no knowledge of the connection.

Two differently constituted Employment Appeal Tribunals (‘EATs’) have recently considered whether it is sex discrimination to pay men on parental leave less than women on maternity leave. In Capita, the EAT decided that it was not direct sex discrimination to fail to pay full salary to a father taking shared parental leave, in circumstances where a mother taking maternity leave during the same period would have received full pay. However in Hextall, the EAT has indicated that enhancing maternity pay but not pay for shared parental leave may give rise to an indirect sex discrimination claim by fathers.

The Labour Court of Brussels treats the long-term effects of cancer as a disability in accordance with the case law of the ECJ. This has triggered an obligation on employers to consider making reasonable adjustments before looking at dismissal.

The transferee in this case attempted to replace the transferred employees’ salaries with lower in accordance with its collective agreement, compensating for the reduction by means of a ‘personal allowance’, which it then proceeded to reduce by a set percentage based on the age of the employees each time there was a wage increase. The court held that this ‘basket comparison’ method of harmonising the wages of old and new staff was at odds with Directive 2001/23, rejecting the transferee’s argument that the ‘ETO’ provision in that directive permits such an amendment of the terms of employment.

The Danish Supreme Court has upheld the decision from the Danish Eastern High Court (reported in EELC 2017/26) on the implementation of the Working Time Directive to the effect that an ‘intervention act’ can be deemed to be a collective agreement within the meaning of Article 18 of the Working Time Directive.

The Amsterdam Court of First Instance had contemplated asking certain preliminary questions to the ECJ about the EU rights of UK citizens residing outside the UK (see EELC 2018/18), but the Court of Appeal has now refused this, considering the underlying claims to be too vague.

In 2017, the ECJ delivered its judgment in the Socha case (C-149/16). This judgment, about the Collective Redundancy Directive (98/59/EC), highlights the contradictions between the Directive and Polish law and demonstrates some of consequences such a judgment can lead to.

Directive 2008/104/EC (Temporary Agency Work Directive) is implemented by means of the Norwegian Working Environment Act and provides for equal pay between regular workers and temporary agency workers. The Supreme Court has held that, in domestic law, the concept of ‘pay’ includes allowances for travel time and therefore a temporary agency worker was entitled to the same allowance as his permanent colleagues.

In the aftermath of the ECJ’s ruling in the Asklepios case (C-680/15), the German Federal Employment Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht, hereinafter: BAG) held a dynamic referral clause valid following a transfer.

The German Federal Labour Court has held that it was justifiable for the employment of an actor to be limited in time because of the “type of work” involved and the fact that the work was with a film production company, even though the actor was given a number of fixed term employment contracts over around 18 years.

The general protection against dismissal under Austrian labour law only applies if at least five employees are employed permanently. The special provisions for air carriers under Austrian law only apply to air carriers that have their principal place of business in Austria. Whether foreign businesses and their employees employed outside Austria should be afforded protection against dismissal remains unresolved.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (‘EAT’) has confirmed that, even if an employee is not actually disabled for the purpose of the relevant statutory test, it is unlawful for an employer to discriminate against that employee because of a perceived disability.

A mobility clause must be sufficiently precise, but this condition can still be fulfilled even if the clause tries to cover both current and possible future locations of the company, provided any future locations are still within France and provided any change of location is justified by the needs of the business.

The Danish Supreme Court has ruled that a medical diagnosis is not required when deciding whether a person suffers from a disability protected under Directive 2000/78.

The Polish national social insurance authority has no power to police ‘social dumping’. Neither is there any legal basis or justification for excluding workers performing work in other EU Member States from the national social insurance system based on an unverifiable assumption that social dumping is taking place.

The Spanish Supreme Court has again ruled on the highly controversial question of whether limitations to the liability of a transferee established in a collective bargaining agreement (‘CBA’) in the context of a CBA-led transfer are valid, or whether they contravene the Spanish implementation of the Acquired Rights Directive.