The Bulgarian Supreme Court of Cassation has held that it is not discriminatory to require an accession fee to a collective agreement for employees who are not members of a union, provided that this does not exceed the (direct and indirect) financial obligations of members.

In a decision regarding the legality of the prosecution of a group of strikers following a road blockade, the criminal chamber of the Belgian Supreme Court has stated rather surprisingly that Article 6(4) of the European Social Charter (right to collective action) could not be directly invoked by the strikers as it lacked clarity and precision, thus requiring supplementary regulation of this right by national legislation.

An employer has been held liable for not preventing and tackling a group of employees’ bullying of another employee contrary to the employer’s obligations under the Danish Working Environment Act.

In a decision with major implications across the UK gig economy and beyond, the Court of Appeal has ruled that workers who were incorrectly classified as independent contractors and not paid for holiday they took can claim compensation for the whole period of their engagement.

A judgment of the Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht, ‘BAG’) of 4 May 2022 has further consolidated the standards developed specifically for the distribution of the burden of proof in the context of compensation claims for the performance of overtime by the employee. The burden of proof lies with the employee and cannot be met by giving mere circumstantial evidence (cf. BAG, judgment of 10 April 2013 – 5 AZR 122/12). Following this recent decision, a different result also does not result from the obligation under Union law to introduce a system for measuring the daily working time of the employee. The background to this is the discussion initiated by the court of first instance as to whether the interpretation of the Working Time Directive 2003/88/EC requires that the employee be granted relief in the process concerning the payment of overtime, since the national legislature has not yet sufficiently transposed the Directive. The BAG has now decided that it is up to the federal legislator to decide on the specific design of the system. Moreover, the BAG found that the Directive’s scope is limited to working time law as a regulatory matter of occupational health and safety law, but the Directive does not provide the Member States with any guidelines on remuneration issues. In contrast, it does not affect the burden of proof in favour of employees in overtime compensation proceedings.

The Italian Supreme Court has held that a period of stand-by not to be working time when the employee is free to rest and devote themself to leisure activity, without any specific obligation as to vigilance concerning the workplace. In this case there was a waiting period only, during which the employee was obliged to work only after an alarm for which the payment of an indemnity was provided as well as compensatory rest.

The Bucharest Court of Appeal has (partially) changed a decision issued by the Bucharest Tribunal and ordered an employer to pay a claimant employee the differences in salary rights representing bonus for overtime hours worked, bonus for hours worked on days of weekly rest, bonus for hours worked on legal holidays and bonus for hours worked at night, even in the absence of working time records.

The Supreme Court of the Republic of Slovenia has issued a judgment concerning the remuneration for the performance of stand-by duty by a person in the military and the issue of whether it falls within Directive 2003/88/EC concerning certain aspects of the organisation of working time. It was held that the time spent on stand-by duty, during which the plaintiff did not actually work but was required to be on stand-by at a particular place and was then at the employer’s disposal, without being able to go home or elsewhere, was to be regarded as working time. The Court found that, notwithstanding national legislation to the contrary, the plaintiff was entitled to the remuneration provided for in their contract of employment for full-time work, that is to 100% of the basic salary.

This case originated in an assessment by the Revenue Commissioners that pizza delivery drivers who had worked for the taxpayer company in 2010 and 2011 were ‘employees’ and, as such, were taxable under Schedule E to the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997. A Tax Appeals Commissioner (TAC) upheld this assessment, whose decision, in turn, was upheld by the High Court (HC). The HC distilled the questions raised by the TAC’s decision to four core issues: mutuality of obligation, substitution, integration and the written terms of the contract (and the weight that it should be given). The HC found no error of law by the TAC and dismissed the appeal, which decision was then appealed to the Court of Appeal (CA). The CA, sitting in a panel of three with one judge dissenting, found that the drivers were in fact and in law engaged by the company on contracts for services and were thus independent contractors, not employees.

In this case an individual needed to establish that he was an employee or a worker as part of his claim that he was entitled to paid holidays. The dispute centred on the fact that there was no commitment to offer or accept a minimum amount of work. The Court of Appeal concluded that such a commitment is not a requirement of worker status and that a panel committee member was, therefore, a worker entitled to paid holidays.

The first instance Labour Court of Aachen has issued one of the first judgments on the prerequisites of trade secret protection under the German Trade Secrets Act (Geschäftsgeheimnisgesetz). It well illustrates that employers who have so far not installed an adequate secrecy management taking care of the protection of their trade secrets and critical know-how are well advised to do so swiftly. A rude awakening is imminent if the legal protection of secrets is denied in court because one’s own measures were not taken, not appropriate or not sufficiently documented. Also, the judgment makes findings on the extent and scope of the claimant’s burden of presentation and proof in trade secret litigation under the Trade Secrets Act.

Child-raising periods in another Member State are to be included when determining the old-age pension, provided that the worker worked an paid contributions in the home Member State both before and after transferring the worker’s place of residence to another Member State where those child-raising periods were carried out.

A provision on supplementary allowance for night work does not implement Directive 2003/88 and hence does not implement Union law within the meaning of Article 51(1) of the Charter.

A Member State cannot exclude Union citizens who are nationals of another Member State from entitlement to family benefits during the first three months of their residence in that Member State if they are not in receipt of national income during that period, while a national of the Member State concerned who returns to that Member State after having resided in another Member State in accordance with EU law is entitled to such benefits on return without receiving such income.

It is for the EU legislature to decide on the location of the seat of the European Labour Authority, not the Member States.

It is allowed to apply the pro rata temporis principle to prior activities performed as volunteer firefighter when determining the firefighter’s ‘financial seniority’. Unfortunately, no English translation of the judgment is available.

Union law on remuneration policies of investment managers may apply to the dividends paid to employee shareholders who fall within the personal scope of this policy.

The concept of ‘any other family members who are members of the household of the Union citizen having the primary right of residence’ in point (a) of the first subparagraph of Article 3(2) of Directive 2004/38/EC refers to persons who have a relationship of dependence with that citizen, based on close and stable personal ties, forged within the same household, in the context of a shared domestic life going beyond a mere temporary cohabitation entered into for reasons of pure convenience.

The conflict rules in Article 13(2) of Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 are not applicable when a person who resides in one Member State where the centre of interests of his or her activities is also situated, whilst pursuing an activity in two other Member States. Furthermore, EU law precludes national legislation which makes the award of an early retirement pension applied for conditional on the waiver by the person concerned of the right to practice as a lawyer, without taking into account, in particular, the Member State in which the activity concerned is pursued.

The right to annual leave precludes national legislation according to which the right to annual leave can expire without having enabled the worker to exercise that right.

Article 7 of Directive 2003/88/EC and Article 21(2) of the Charter preclude national legislation under which the entitlement to paid annual leave, acquired by a worker during the leave year in the course of which that worker actually worked before finding him or herself in a state of total invalidly or incapacity for work due to illness which has persisted since, may lapse, either at the end of a carry-over period authorised under national law, or even at a later stage, where the employer has not, in good time, enabled the worker to exercise that entitlement.