While a two-month limitation period applicable for claims on back payments, the regulation of which is left to the Member States following the principle of national procedural autonomy, is in accordance with EU law, there is clearly a risk that the civil servants and judges concerned may not be in a position to establish whether, and the extent to which, they have been discriminated against, within

This contribution analyses the content and relevance of the of the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the B/Yodel Delivery Network Ltd case, and discusses its meaning and impact on the notion of ‘worker’ under the EU law.

The ECtHR’s decision in Herbai v Hungary focuses on freedom of expression. However, there is a larger issue that touches upon the overlap of employment obligations and professional engagement.

In 2017, the municipality of Copenhagen made exercise mandatory for social workers performing physical tasks, such as lifting patients, cooking and cleaning. Private Danish companies have also started to impose exercise on their employees, including sedentary employees. Rationale behind mandatory exercise in the workplace is that it makes employees healthier and more productive, which is a win-win

The growth in multilateral working relationships (e.g. agency work, chains of sub-contracting and corporate groups) is causing Member States to increasingly scrutinise their traditional, contractual approach to the notion of ‘employer’. So far, little attention has been paid to the boundaries and limits that EU law sets when defining the employer. The lack of attention may have come to an end with

In 2018, the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs came up with idea of introducing a new category of employee – the autonomous employee – in Estonia. This concept is based on Article 17(1) of the Working Time Directive, which allows derogations from the scope of the Directive for managing executives or other persons with autonomous decision-taking powers. The implementation of the concept of the autonomous

While needing to ensure the health and safety of their employees during the Covid-19 pandemic, employers face many burning data protection questions, including under what conditions they can process employees’ personal data (in particular health data) and whether gathering personal data concerning employees’ medical history, trips and contacts with infected persons, is allowed. This article focuses

On 16 December 2019, Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law entered into force (hereinafter: Whistleblower Directive; WBD). Based on a Commission proposal of 23 April 2018 and accompanied by an intensive policy debate, the final version of the Directive represents the most far-reaching piece

The Whistleblower Directive of 2019 is by far the European Union’s most important piece of whistleblowing legislation to date, covering a remarkably broad range of regulatory fields and subjects. After Part 1 of this two-part article series, which mostly focused on the Directive’s scope and general conditions for whistleblower protection, Part 2 will analyse its provisions on public disclosures and

Directive 2014/66/EU on Intra-Corporate Transfer regulates the temporary secondment of key personnel and trainees from third countries to the Member States of the EU. It is part of the EU external labour migration policy and aims at facilitating this policy by setting up harmonised conditions for admission, residence and work of these migrants, including the right to move and work in another Member

This article analyses three cumulative situations of inequality suffered by seasonal low-skilled migrant workers in Europe: i) reinforced inequality of bargaining power before the employer, ii) legal inequality between them and the local workforce, and iii) legal inequality between them and high-skilled migrant employees. In this regard, the prioritisation of the needs of national economies rather

In 2013 Weldon-Johns used the work-family typology classification model (WFTCM) to analyse the development of EU work-family policies. That examination showed that EU work-family legislation continued to focus on maternal care and was underpinned by the extended motherhood typology. In 2019, the Work-Life Balance for Parents and Carers Directive 2019/1158 was passed, implementing key changes to the

This Special Issue represents a collection of papers that examine the relevance of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union to EU labour law from various perspectives. Since its adoption in 2009, the Charter and its impact on EU labour law have indeed become a hot topic for labour law scholars. Several aspects related to the Charter and its relationship to labour law have been intensively

Although platform work has been studied by many labour law researchers, mainly the unclear labour law status of platform workers as well as possible new avenues to ensure their protection have been discussed. However, platform work is similar to already-regulated atypical work arrangements and the possibilities of the application of these regulations needs to be analysed. The aim of this article is

European citizens have been exposed to social exclusion risks due to the economic crisis and the retrenchment in the welfare state budget. Among those exposed, we find workers and self-employed workers. The Member States of Central and Northern Europe have tried to restrict the free movement of workers and the self-employed and limit access to social benefits for European citizens from Eastern Europe

This article is directed towards addressing the employment related issues encountered by female workers in the gig economy in the EU. It revolves around analysing ‘the switch’ from the traditional labour market to the platform economy. It subsequently explains, by drawing comparisons, that the issues of gender inequality in the brick and mortar world are still prevalent in world of the digital platform

The Concept of worker is the gateway to the access to the protection of labour and social security law. The Court of Justice of the European Union first defined this concept in the field of the Free Movement of Workers in the Lawrie-Blum case. The scope of this article is to compare the definitions used by the Court in the fields of the free movement of workers and in the Social Policy Directives,

The purpose of protection against dismissal is to protect the employee against unjustified dismissal, which is expected to lead to stable employment relationships and job security. In recent years, the concept of employment security has entered the world of policy and science. This article aims to contribute to the field of labour law by investigating the objectives and effects of the Dutch transition

While much of the emphasis has been on when and how economies may safely re-open due to the coronavirus pandemic, this article studies the undervalued workplace considerations therein. The initial responses of Member States to the pandemic are outlined for the purpose of setting out similarities and distinctions, but also and mostly to foreground an analysis to date of unresolved problems related to

This article provides an account of the Italian response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the labour law field. The author focuses on the policy measures in the matters of income support, parental leave, rest and holiday leave, agile working (i.e. teleworking), dismissal, as well as on the special provisions arranged by the social partners and later adopted by the legislator to preserve the health and safety

As in many countries, the coronavirus pandemic is a major challenge facing labour law in Germany. On the one hand, the risk of infection in the workplace must be reduced as effectively as possible to prevent the pandemic from spreading. On the other hand, work processes must be maintained as far as possible to prevent an economic crisis, which could have an adverse impact on the pandemic. In this situation

Similar to many other European countries, the Irish Government has attempted to address the employment implications of the Covid-19 pandemic through a mixture of income support schemes. Coming with the repercussions of the Great Recession remain in memory and the toll that took on the Irish banking sector, the Government seems to have endeavoured to take an approach that may be more conservative as

2020 had been marked as a significant year for the UK with its departure from the European Union. The coronavirus pandemic quickly became the most important issue facing the Government under a third Prime Minister since the 2016 referendum. From the start, problems have dogged this Government in meeting the monumental challenges posed by Covid-19. The UK approached the work implications of this pandemic

The Covid-19 crisis in Spain has led to the adoption of several pieces of legislation with labour law and social security content. The main priority of this fast-changing and frequently adapted legislation has been to avoid a sharp rise in unemployment. To do so, the legislator facilitated the use of the already existing procedures to temporarily suspend contracts (Expedientes Temporales de Regulación

Against the backdrop of an ‘intelligent lockdown’ the Dutch government has launched a threefold emergency package to support businesses and safeguard employment as much as possible. This ‘Emergency Jobs and Economy Package’ contains, amongst others, measures that aim to ensure the safeguarding of income and salaries for employees as well as self-employed workers. It concerns mainly subsidy law and

As Belgium and its population were heavily hit by the coronavirus, the Government adopted specific measures to address the economy and the world of work. The initiatives were deployed during the crisis but have also been designed for the exit scenario. Various measures have a strong relation with labour law. In addition to health and safety obligations, as specified in the Belgian Well-being Act, the

The small size and particular location make Luxembourg an interesting case study on the measures undertaken by the government to tackle the most pressing socio-economic issues deriving from the current pandemic crisis. Most such measures are comparable to those put in place across the EU; some are specific to its characteristics, and show its high dependency upon neighbouring countries and its limited

The French government has mobilised various instruments to deal with the consequences of the pandemic. The main one is partial unemployment, which for the time being has made it possible to limit the rise of unemployment. However, as the period of return-to-work has begun, the question arises as to the distribution of efforts between the State, employers and employees. In any case, this crisis has

The EU legal order recognises at its highest level both fundamental social rights/freedoms and economic rights/freedoms. As is well-known, it is in the cases where these have had to be balanced against one another, that profound legal and political difficulties have appeared over the years, feeding into a more general concern about an asymmetry between social and economic values and outcomes in the

The article addresses the issues of which, from the EU perspective, are the applicable law and the competent courts in respect of employment contracts/relationships performed via the web and charac...

The European Court of Justice has recently issued rulings on the interpretation of the European Working Time Directive 2003/88, which appear to restrict flexible working time arrangements(especially Matzak C-518/15,Syndicat C-254/18 and CCOOC-55/18). Only a few months prior tothe latter ruling of the CJEU, the Austrian legislator amended the Working Time Act in orderto make it more flexible. The article

Most EU countries are experiencing an increased use of Collective Labour Agreement clauses – Social Rehire Clauses – that oblige incoming service providers, while taking over a service, to employ all or part of outgoing providers’ personnel or at least give these workers priority future hiring. In the established case law of the Court of Justice, rehiring personnel is considered a crucial element,

The exercise of human rights is put at risk by the creation, conduct, and termination of employment relationships. For this reason, we often find that fundamental rights arguments are invoked in disputes between employers and workers and the mechanisms of labour and employment law are pressed to vindicate those rights through a process of ‘constitutionalisation’. Notably, the European Convention on

The decision of the British people to leave the European Union (EU) raises foundational questions for many legal fields. The effects are especially likely to be felt within domestic employment law,...

The article looks at the outcome of the two legal proceedings in the Schüth and IR cases. In both cases employees of the Catholic Church – a choirmaster and organist in a Catholic parish and a trained physician working as Head of the Internal Medicine Department of a Catholic hospital - were dismissed because of the violation of the Basic Regulations on Employment Relationships in the Service of the

Social dialogue practices across the world are deeply embedded in the different national socio-economic traditions and legal systems and therefore characterised by great heterogeneity. Cross-border...

The essay analyses the concept of employed worker in the light of the expansive trend of labour law. Two perspectives are investigated. The first concerns the revisiting of the concept of employed worker through the interpretation of jurisprudence. Comparative analysis demonstrates a tendency, not univocal but prevalent, of jurisprudence to broaden the notion of subordinate work, which manifests itself

This paper focuses on the specific problems in the labour and social security legislation as it relates to crowdworkers in the digitalised new economy, analysing their place in labour market, and especially in the collective agreements which are the standard means of regulating working conditions in the Nordic model. Sweden has a binary system where a performing party is as either an employee or self-employed

‘Social rights’, the late Professor Sir Bob Hepple warned in 2007 ‘are like paper tigers, fierce in appearance but missing in tooth and claw.’ This note sets out to explore the potential of the right to an effective remedy in Article 47 of the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights (‘CFR’) in equipping the Union’s social acquis with credible remedies. Article 47 CFR is one of the most-litigated

The present paper investigates the ongoing validity of the notion of subordination as selection criteria to allocate the labour protections in the contemporary economic framework. The gig economy is deeply affecting the way of working, transforming the employee in a service provider. This phenomenon is partially due to the progressive shift from a firm-based production model towards a market transaction

The Charter draws a distinction between rights and principles. Article 51(1) of the Charter says that rights must be ‘respected’ whereas principles must merely be ‘observed’. The question is how to tell whether a provision in the Charter contains a right or a principle and what implication this has for social rights – which in a number of national Constitutions are traditionally seen as principles

The International Labour Organisation hosted the Sixth Regulating for Decent Work Conference in its centenary year of 2019. As part of these three days, I had the pleasure to chair a panel posing the prescient question: ‘Are the Categories of “Employee” and “Self-Employed” Still a Valid Tool to Allocate Labour Rights?’ In this brief introduction, I outline the product of that panel by situating classification

In Italy, workers’ mobility is a very complicated puzzle that is composed of different pieces. This paper deals with such different pieces under the perspective of workers' mobility within the European Union and highlights that the term mobility is not a synonym of posting (of workers), since the latter term indicates only one of the types (although the most relevant) of workers’ mobility. The author

The European Court of Human Rights has recognised the right to strike as falling within the ambit of Article 11 ECHR. The Strasbourg Court has expanded the scope of the provision by applying the so-called integrated approach, integrating materials of other international bodies into the interpretation of the Convention. Recently, the protection of the right to strike under Article 11 (1) ECHR has been

This contribution intends to shed light on the working conditions of Belgian and Italian Ph.D. students, from the angle of EU law. In Belgium these (mostly young) researchers can be recruited either as ‘Ph.D. fellows’ or ‘teaching assistants’. Ph.D. fellows have a student-like status: they touch a fellowship exempt from personal income tax. However, social contributions are being withheld, for them

Not only in Germany but in many European states the level of coverage by collective agreements is declining. Since collective bargaining autonomy is based on the principle of voluntary membership, one of its weaknesses lies in the declining degree of organisation on both the employers’ and the employees’ side. In the long term, weak unions cannot ensure fair working conditions. As a result, collective

One aspect also addressed in the Matzak case is the personal scope of the Working Time Directive 2003/88 (WTD), as Mr Matzak is a ‘volunteer firefighter’ and it is not clear if such persons are covered by this piece of EU legislation. This article will therefore first explore the notion of ‘volunteer’ and then examine under what circumstances volunteers are to be considered workers for the purpose

The paper discusses the concept of the term worker in European labour law, focusing on the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Matzak case. First, the facts that are essential to Mr Matzak’s qualification as a worker are presented. In a second step, the part of the Court’s decision which refers to the concept of ‘worker’ is analysed. The third and main part deals in detail

The CJEU’S Matzak judgment raises diverse and important questions concerning (not only) working time regulation in the European Union. The present special issue sheds light on some of these questions, more specifically with regard to the Working Time Directive‘s personal scope as well as the notions of working time and rest time under EU law. The Directive’s scope is linked to the concept of worker

The European Union competences on health and safety of workplace constituted the legal basis for the 93/104 Directive to be adopted (and for the consolidated text of 2003/88 Directive). The Court of Justice has firmly maintained this approach refusing to take into account the history of international regulation on working time, which links together work and salary in perspective to give the workers

The present elaboration is dedicated to one of the aspects of the Matzak judgment, where CJEU ruled that a standby time which a volunteer firefighter spends at home with the duty to respond to calls from his employer within a few minutes, very significantly restricting the opportunities to do other activities, must be regarded as working time under the Directive 2003/88. The position of the Advocate

The ongoing transformation of work has been increasing the number of working relationships not falling within the domain of labour law. Non-standard and contingent working arrangements, most recently those prompted by the so-called gig economy, struggle to meet customary employment tests, since the employee/self-employed dichotomy has long been eclipsed. As this article will argue, the Court of Justice

This contribution provides an analytical overview of recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the framework agreement on fixed-term work (FTW agreement). The cases discussed virtually all concerned fixed-term work in the public sector and, in essence, raise the delicate question of whether the non-discrimination rule and the rules on fighting abuse of successive fixed-term employment

People with intellectual disabilities occupy a peripheral position in the labour market. They have low rates of participation in employment and this often takes the form of sheltered employment in settings segregated from persons without disabilities. Although their working lives have received limited attention in legal scholarship, this article argues that law can play a positive role in fostering

The spread of non-standard forms of work, including platform work, has created some friction between labour law and competition law, in particular concerning the collective bargaining of self-employed workers. This article aims to suggest a different, complementary rather than antagonistic, relationship between competition law and labour law. It initially explores the legal construction of the antagonistic

When assessing the personal work relationship in Austria, first the contractual relationship needs to be scrutinised. Following the differentiation between employees, semi-dependent workers (with the sub-category of employee-like working persons) and businesspersons, all, only some, or none, of the statutes and laws falling under the category of ‘individual labour law’ (e.g. Working Hours Act, Holidays

Defining the personal scope of application of the right to be represented by a trade union for collective bargaining purposes starts by defining the notion of employee/worker on whose behalf the conclusion of collective agreements is not disputed. In the German legal system, a sub-category of self-employed persons, known as ‘employee-like’ persons, is also included in the scope of the statute on collective

The purpose of this Special Issue of the European Labour Law Journal is to present New Trade Union Strategies for New Forms of Employment to an audience of labour law scholars. New Trade Union Strategies is a research report written by Nicola Countouris and Valerio De Stefano to express the results and conclusions of a two-year research project which they had organised, commissioned by ETUC with financial

This special issue of the European Labour Law Journal is entitled ‘Testing the ‘‘Personal Work Relation’’: New Trade Union Strategies for New Forms of Employment’. It follows the publication of a Report commissioned by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and written by two of the co-editors of this issue, Nicola Countouris and Valerio De Stefano. In the wake of the launch of the European

This chapter provides an overview of the characteristics of the Belgian employment contract and, in particular, of the concept of ‘subordination’. After having painted a picture of what differentiates an employment contract from a contract for services, it, subsequently, assesses the classification of certain specific examples, such as self-employed persons with only one client. The role of economic