Can the employer prohibit overtime?

Johan Pastarus, mental health counselor, responds:

As an employee, it is important to rest because it helps maintain our health. There are fewer health problems and workplace injuries among employees with longer rest periods.

With the decision of the European Court of Justice of March 2, the practice of work and rest has changed. As daily rest time, the worker must rest at least 11 hours. This means that an employee can work a maximum of 13 hours in a shift, including overtime. As weekly rest time, you must rest for 48 consecutive hours or 36 hours when calculating the summed working time.

The maximum average working time permitted for a seven day period is 48 hours per calculation period, except 52 hours by prior agreement, but the employee may terminate this agreement at any time with two weeks’ notice.

The purpose of work and rest time requirements is to preserve the mental and physical health of employees. The employer must ensure that the employee’s work and rest time are balanced and that a situation does not arise where the employee burns out and is no longer able to work. It is worth considering the importance of rest for health in two ways: from top to bottom and from bottom to top.

The bottom-up perspective is human-centered. It is important to consider time spent at work, i.e. how much time you spend in the work environment. We associate our work environment with work activities and are actually available there at any time. Resting means that the employee can take care of his private life, is in no way tied to his work tasks and can rest without any feeling of pressure.

A longer vacation contributes to our creativity and efficiency. Cognitive abilities are rather limited because the brain can only carry out intense work up to a certain point. Intense and continuous work and stress tire the brain and burn out important tools for our work, such as attention, memory and self-regulation. This is the source of a serious and common health problem, burnout. It is when we rest that our brain recovers and allows us to solve work tasks more efficiently when we return to work. Rest means that the employee is not physically or mentally engaged in work activities, including worries, stress, casual work terminations.

2023-12-14 20:09:00
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