Is Training Time Considered Working Time?
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has held that mandatory vocational training held at an offsite location and outside of normal working hours was considered working time.
Required Vocational Training
This case concerned an emergency services worker in Romania who was required by his employer to undertake 160 hours of vocational training with a vocational training provider at the training provider's premises. Of the training hours completed, 124 took place outside his normal working hours. The individual brought a claim in Romania that those 124 hours should be paid as overtime.
There was a referral to the ECJ and ultimately the decision came down to a question of whether the mandatory vocational training completed at the employer's request, outside normal hours of work, at the premises of the training services provider (away from their place of work) constituted working time under the EU Working Time Directive (the EU legislation from which the Working Time Regulations 1998 in the UK (WTR) are derived) (Directive).
The ECJ's Findings
The ECJ noted that a key concept of what constitutes 'working time' is that the worker must be physically present at a place determined by the employer and remain available to the employer in order to be able, if necessary, provide his or her services immediately.
The workplace is understood as any place where the worker is required to exercise an activity on the employer’s instruction. So, where a worker receives instructions from their employer to attend vocational training so as to be able to carry out their duties, it must be held that, during the periods of vocational training, that worker is at their employer’s disposal.
The ECJ found it was irrelevant that the vocational training:
- took place outside normal working hours
- did not take place at the worker’s usual place of work
- differed from the individual's normal duties
Therefore, in this case it was found that the training constituted ‘working time’ within the meaning of the Directive.
The Case's Impact in the UK
In UK law, working time under the WTR expressly excludes time spent training where the immediate provider is an educational institution, or a person whose main business is the provision of training, and the training is provided on a course run by that institution or person.
However, this ECJ decision appears to go further than the WTR in this respect. Whilst ECJ decisions are no longer binding in the UK post-Brexit, UK tribunals may still have regard to this decision where relevant when applying the WTR. It will therefore be interesting to see whether this case will be taken into account by UK courts and tribunals in future cases arising from similar facts.