The new decision of the European Court of Justice may help in the fight against crunches
Yesterday, the European Court of Justice ruled that employers in Europe should implement a system for tracking employees’ working hours. According to a number of analysts, this decision will contribute to the fight against crunches in the gaming industry.
European Court of Justice
The court’s decision is based on the so-called EU Working Time Directive.
It sets the employees:
- no more than 48 working hours per week;
- at least 11 hours of continuous rest every day.
There is also a voluntary refusal of employees from these requirements, which must be expressed in writing. But the opposite is also possible: even if the rejection of the Directive was included in the terms of the employment contract, the employee may demand the cancellation of the waiver agreement.
The European Court of Justice demanded that employers in European countries “create an objective, reliable and accessible system” that will allow measuring how many working hours each employee has on a daily basis. This means that EU states will have to develop and gradually implement their own methods of monitoring working hours. There are no set deadlines for the implementation of this decision yet. But it is expected that at least in Germany it can be legislated on January 1, 2020.
For the EU gaming industry, this may mean a significant reduction in crunches, which everywhere lead to the “burnout” of developers. Legal experts advise gaming companies to take action as soon as possible, notes Gamesindustry.biz . Otherwise, sooner or later they will face legal problems.
But there is a difficulty here. The decision of the European Court imposes a heavy administrative and financial burden on the management of companies. Technically, the Directive provides employees with protection from overwork, but there are no funds for its implementation yet. Because of this, developers continue to take extra working hours.
And yet, the implementation of the Directive will at least strengthen control over the payment of overtime, according to Sebastian Schwiddessen, an employee of the Baker McKenzie law firm. It will be easier for employees to prove that they worked extra hours.
We should add that recently the most high—profile cases related to crunches related to American or Canadian companies – for example, Riot Games, Rockstar or BioWare. However, in European countries, the problem also persists. One of the steps to eliminate it was the creation of the game developers union Game Workers Unite in the UK.
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