Important changes in the practice of granting rest time to employees

On 2 March 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued judgment C‑477/21, which changes the current Estonian practice regarding the requirements for granting daily and weekly rest time. Employers whose employees work on the basis of summarised working time system may need to adjust their employees’ work organisation and the principles of drawing up work schedules. The purpose of the new approach is to prevent overwork, maintain the health of, and ensure the safety of employees.

Employees working under the summarised working time system must be granted 11 consecutive hours of daily rest time and 36 consecutive hours of weekly rest time. Until now, the practice in Estonia has been that daily rest time is not added immediately before or after weekly rest time. Therefore, as a rule, employees working under the summarised working time system are granted weekly rest time that is not immediately preceded or followed by daily rest time. For example, if an employee working under a schedule ends their working day at 20:00 on a Saturday evening, then according to current practice and interpretation of the law, the employee may resume work at 08:00 on Monday morning (i.e. after 36 hours).

However, the Court of Justice does not agree with this approach and has taken an innovative position, according to which daily and weekly rest time are two distinct rights. The court concluded that daily rest time is not part of weekly rest time but must be granted to the employee in addition to their weekly rest time. The court explained that if daily and weekly rest times are granted consecutively, the daily rest time must precede the weekly rest time. Therefore, the employee must be granted daily rest time immediately after their working time and before their weekly rest time. For example, if an employee working under a schedule ends their working day at 20:00 on a Saturday evening, the employee may resume work at 19:00 on Monday evening (i.e. after 47 hours). Working hours are immediately followed by 11 hours of daily rest time and then 36 hours of weekly rest time.

There is no need to amend the Estonian Employment Contracts Act based on the new judgment of the European Court of Justice, as only the interpretation of the law has changed. The Labour Inspectorate will follow the new interpretation when supervising compliance with work and rest time requirements from 1 January 2024. Therefore, employers using summarised working time should make the necessary changes to their work organisation accordingly by the end of this year.