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Luxembourg (dpa) - To what extent is on-call time working time?
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) will give a judgment on this question today.
Specifically, it is about a firefighter from Offenbach, who may be on standby outside the office, but has the requirement to reach the city limits within 20 minutes in work clothes and with the emergency vehicle.
The Federal Chairman of the German Fire Brigade Union, Siegfried Maier, assumes that the judgment has the potential to change the world of fire services.
(Case C-580/19)
An opinion by Advocate General Giovanni Pitruzzella already tended to suggest that in this specific case, the on-call time could well be counted as working time.
Often the EU judges follow their experts.
According to the Advocate General, a specific decision in this case would have to be made by the competent court in Germany.
It must also be considered how often there are deployments on standby.
“A high frequency of operations during on-call times could lead to such a comprehensive involvement of the employee that it reduces his ability to plan his free time during these times to almost zero,” says the report.
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Even if the report tends to regard standby time as working time in the Offenbach case, there is also one point that speaks against it: According to Pitruzzella, the file shows that the firefighter from Offenbach between 2013 and 2015 averaged 6.67 times had been called into action every year.
In his view, such a frequency does not mean that the employee normally has to expect to be called to action when on call.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210308-99-739690 / 2
ECJ opinion