The Situation
A spanish company with installs security systems in a divers enumber of provinces closed a number of regional offices in 2011. The employee, wih a company car, travels from home directly to the client, and after the last client of the day then travels home. Before the closure, the employees would first go to the office to pick up the company car, then drive to the customer. This trip fell under work hours. However, with the closure of the regional offices, the employer will no longer reimburse the travel time as it was not considered working.
The distance that the employees would travel to clients varies widely; sometimes one hundred kilometers on a one way journey, sometimes a total travel time of three hours. The Spanish court which handled this dispute on travel time asked the European Court to give a preliminary ruling.
By the Judge
The question that the Spanish court laid down upon the European Court of Justice is whether travel time towards a client from home -and vice versa- could be considered work time in situations where the employee had no set workspace.
The Judgement
The European Court looked toward Directive 2003/88/EG for precedent. It states that work time is the defined as the time when the employee:
Operates;
At the disposal of the employer;
and carrying out his activity or duties.
All other time is considered a rest period. The court concluded that the trips that make the employees go to their customers are a necessary part of the job. As such, travel falls under work time. The employer argued that during the journey employees are not at his disposal, and therefore cannot be considered working, but the court thinks otherwise, as this time is not freely usable by the employee. It was also found that the employer schedules shortly before the beginning of the shift which clients must be visited, and may reschedule at The Court declared that under the circumstances described, the time that employees without a permanent or usual place of work took to travel between their residence and the location designated the first and last customer by the employer will be considered worktime, working within the directive precedent set.