Can the time an employee needs to log in and start up, prior to their service, be regarded as working time? In other words: should an employee receive salary for this login and start-up time? The Court of The Hague recently examined this question.
Employee's Situation
The employee concerned worked for a call centre, including on a project for the Municipal Health Service. She was working from home and her task was to answer telephone calls of customers. When she was logged in to the systems and pushed the button ‘Take Calls’, customers could call her. The rules in place at the employer show that employees who had to start at 09:00 a.m. in fact had to answer the first call at 09:00 a.m. The employer expected its employees always to be logged in one quarter of an hour before their shift started.
However, according to the employee this logging in took a long time. The log-in programs were slow, which forced the employee to start logging in and starting up always half an hour in advance. The employee therefore believes that this time can be designated as working time, which should be paid. Since the instructions of the employer applied during that time, the employee could not spend this time as she wished.
Employer’s Arguments
The employer has a different opinion. During the login time, the employee did not have to work yet. She also did not have to report to anyone as soon as she started up her computer, she was not under the employer’s authority at that time, and did not receive any instructions from her employer. After all, she was working from home. According to the employer, the login and start-up time could therefore not be designated as paid working time.
Opinion of the Subdistrict Court
The Subdistrict Court follows the employer’s arguments. It was decisive to the Subdistrict Court’s opinion that the employee was working from home. As soon as the employee had logged in to the systems, she could organize her own time at home until the first call came in. During this time she did not have to work, and her employer had no control over the way in which she spent her time.
Moreover, the Subdistrict Court believed that the employee had substantiated her claim insufficiently. She had not proven that it took such a long time to start up all programs.
Conclusion: Dependent on circumstances of the case
In another matter, against the same employer, which was before the Court of Appeal of The Hague, the earlier time the employee was supposed to attend was indeed designated as paid working time. The difference was that this employee was not working from home, but in the office. Therefore this employee could not freely fill in this time, whereas the employee working from home could.
Whether login or start-up times can be designated as paid working time seems to depend heavily on whether the employee is able to organize and freely fill in his own time during the time that this takes. Naturally, this will rather be the case if an employee works from home than if he or she works in the office.
