Standby duty... always working hours?
On-call duty, standby duty, etc., often give rise to a discussion as to whether or not a certain part of this time can be considered ‘working hours’. After all, this is important when you need to know whether to pay wages. It may also lead to the maximum limits on working time being exceeded, for which overtime and/or compensatory rest may be due. Recently, the Court of Justice provided more clarity on employees in a ‘deserted’ or ‘difficult to reach workplace’. Or how an almost unreachable idyllic Slovenian mountain landscape shapes the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union.