In Federación de Servicios de Comisiones Obreras v Deutsche Bank SAE, a Spanish trade union sought a judgment by the ECJ that Deutsche Bank is under an obligation to set up a system for recording the time worked each day by its members of staff to ensure compliance with working time rules. The Court noted the importance of the right of every worker to a limitation on the maximum number of working hours and to daily and weekly rest periods required by the Working Time Directive (WTD). Member States must therefore require employers to set up an objective, reliable and accessible system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured. In the UK, under Regulation 9 of the Working Time Regulations 1998 (WTR), employers are only currently required to keep adequate records showing compliance with weekly working time limits and night shift work limits/rules, but there is no requirement to keep records of ‘normal’ daily working time and daily/weekly rest periods. This ruling suggests that the UK’s WTR do not comply with the WTD and has implications for employers who are not recording daily hours worked and timings of rest breaks.

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