Meal Hours Regulations Meal times are not compensable hours of work. More formal enforcement responsibilities are divided between HSE, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), the Maritime and Coast Guard Agency‘s (MCA) Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). Contact details for these and other organizations can be found by clicking on the links below. One of the most important areas of EU labour law is that of working conditions. These include provisions on working time, part-time and fixed-term contracts, temporary agency workers and the posting of workers. All these areas are essential to ensure a high level of employment and social protection across the EU. Working time in the United Kingdom is governed by the Working Time Regulations 1998. These limit the working week to an average of 48 hours (although there is an opt-out) and the working day to an average of 8 hours. They also give workers and employees the right to paid holidays and certain breaks. Here you will find resources with basics, questions and answers on specific topics and relevant case law. There is also a separate set of questions and answers on the management of reservist leave in the armed forces. Weekly working time is limited by laws, regulations or administrative provisions or by collective agreements or agreements between the two sides of industry.
The average hours of work for each seven-day period, including overtime, shall not exceed 48 hours. Article 6 of the Working Time Directive. The Working Time Directive (JMT) is EU legislation that obliges EU Member States to guarantee certain rights to workers. It sets out requirements for work schedules, breaks and annual leave to promote the health and safety of workers. According to the JMT, employers are required to set up an objective, reliable and accessible system to measure the duration of each employee‘s daily working time. Derogation relating to a specific category of workers or sectors Member States may derogate from the rules on maximum weekly working time, minimum daily rest, breaks, minimum weekly rest and night work. The investigation recently focused on non-payment of overtime pay, and information released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare shows that unpaid overtime of at least 1 million yen was paid by 1,417 companies (totaling 12.3 billion) in fiscal year 2013. Regulation of rest periods Distinguishes rest periods of 5 to 20 minutes from compensable waiting periods or on-call time, all of which are paid hours of work. Federal law does not require lunches or coffee breaks. However, if employers offer short breaks (usually about 5 to 20 minutes), federal law considers the breaks to be compensable hours worked, which would be included in the sum of hours worked during the work week and taken into account in determining whether overtime was worked. Unauthorized extensions of authorized breaks must not be counted as hours worked if the employer has expressly and unequivocally informed the worker that the authorized break can only last for a certain duration, that any extension of the break is contrary to the employer‘s rules and that any extension of the break will be sanctioned. 4.5.3 “Employer‘s obligation to determine and calculate working time” The Act respecting labour standards contains provisions on hours of work, statutory holidays, night overtime and other conditions of employment.
Employers are therefore required to determine and control working hours correctly. Meal times (usually at least 30 minutes) have a different purpose than coffee or snack breaks and are therefore not working time and cannot be compensated. 4.5.4 Overtime pay Companies must pay a premium rate of pay to employees who exceed legal working hours, work on statutory holidays or work late at night (between 22:00 and 05:00), as shown in the table below. This section deals with Japan‘s labour laws and regulations. Topics include recruitment, employment contracts, wages, working hours, labor rules, occupational safety, hygiene requirements, resignation and dismissal procedures, and Japan‘s social security, health, and pension systems. 4.5.6 Change in the working time system Some jobs involve significant ups and downs in the number of hours worked depending on the year, month or week. In some of these cases, companies are allowed to introduce a working time calculation system whereby the company does not have to pay increased rates on certain weeks or days, even if employees exceed the legal working hours, provided that the workers concerned do not work on average longer than the working time prescribed by law within a predetermined period. In this case, however, an OSH agreement must be concluded or appropriate provisions must be included in the labour rules before a flexible system can be introduced.
Part-time workers are entitled to paid annual leave in proportion to the number of prescribed working days they work. Labor standards inspectors are public employees who, under Japan‘s labor standards legislation, are responsible for entering any type of commercial facility to ensure regulatory compliance and help improve working conditions. 4.5.7 Free working time regime If employees work outside enterprises or if the progress of work is significantly left to employees, an ordinary method of calculating working time may not be appropriate. In this case, there is a “deemed hours of work system”, under which it is assumed that employees have worked for a certain period of time.