The highest court in the European Union has ruled that workers without a fixed office should be paid for time spent traveling to and from their first and last jobs of the day, reported BBC News.
In what was seen as a defeat for the British government, the European Court of Justice said that companies without a home office who employ workers such as electricians, care workers and sales reps could now be in violation of work time regulations if they do not pay their employees for the time to and from the first and last appointments of the day.
The ruling could result in more pay for workers or a reduction in hours, and some employment lawyers said that the decision could increase costs for companies, The Guardian reported.
The court said that its decision was made on the grounds of protecting the "health and safety" of workers under guidelines laid out in the European Union's working time directive, which is designed to protect workers from exploitation by regulating how long employees work, how many breaks they have and how much holiday time they are allotted, according to BBC News. One of the main goals of the directive is to ensure that no employee in the European Union is required to work more than an average of 48 hours per week.
The ruling came out of a legal case brought by a Spanish trade union against Tyco, a multinational security systems company that closed its regional offices in 2011, resulting in employees traveling up to three hours to appointments without being paid, according to The Telegraph.
"The journeys of the workers to the customers their employer designates is a necessary means of providing their technical services at the premises of those customers. Not taking those journeys into account would enable Tyco to claim that only the time spent carrying out the activity of installing and maintaining the security systems falls within the concept of working time, which would distort that concept and jeopardise the objective of protecting the safety and health of workers," the ruling said.
"The fact that the workers begin and finish the journeys at their homes stems directly from the decision of their employer to abolish the regional offices and not from the desire of the workers themselves. Requiring them to bear the burden of their employer's choice would be contrary to the objective of protecting the safety and health of workers pursued by the directive, which includes the necessity of guaranteeing workers a minimum rest period."
