The Court of Appeal of The Hague rules – as did the sub-district court – that the mandatory 10 minutes of start-up time of an employee in a call center is paid working time. This entails that his five-year wage claim is granted. In this case, the employee was required by his employment contract to arrive at work 10 minutes early and there was a min-max agreement in place, where the employee was entitled to pay for each (part of an) hour worked, in excess of the minimum number of hours. However, whether such start-up time actually constitutes paid working time does depend on the circumstances at hand (e.g. the applicability of a collective bargaining agreement) and the contractual arrangements with an employee.
Ruling: ECLI:NL:GHDHA:2023:738
Author: Annemeijne Zwager
