5 ms·

There’s more to life than productivity. The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher.

by brador 7y ago

adwn 7y ago
> The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher. But not thanks to this court ruling. The only thing that will bring employers and employees is more bureaucracy. Employees which let themselves get exploited before, will let themselves get exploited with precise time tracking as well. After all, who's going to check whether you actually tracked the time you spent working after hours – answering e-mails, calling back a client, or fixing bugs in your code?
- panpanna 7y ago
  Seems very reasonable to me, don't know why you call this bureaucracy: "The Court holds that, in the absence of a system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured, it is not possible to determine, objectively and reliably, either the number of hours worked and when that work was done, or the number of hours of overtime worked [...]" ALL places I have worked at have this in some way. Maybe not every day and maybe not always 100% correct but how else will they bill projects internally???
  - adwn 7y ago
    For project budget and billing purposes, it is sufficient to track the number of hours each day. This court decision, however, would require to also track the start and end time, as well as the durations of all breaks. That's because there are laws regulating how much break time you have to take each day (dependend on how many hours you work) and also how much time has to pass between two work days. If you're working from home, you'd have to track every little interruption in which you walk the dog, take your child to kindergarten, etc., otherwise your start and end time won't fit your billed hours. Of course, nobody will bother with such tedious timekeeping, and will instead just enter plausible but made up values for start and end times, rendering this court decision useless.
    - pergadad 7y ago
      No idea why you're so bitter about this, but obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded. This just spreads a common practice to the exploitative employers that don't respect workers rights - such as the right to have a20 minute break during the day.
      - adwn 7y ago
        > obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded Bingo! In practice, employees will just fill in whatever values are convenient. Nothing's going to change for an employee who was pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to work unpaid overtime – now they'll be pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to not track the time they're working after hours. It's just more bureaucracy for everyone, including for honest, fair employers. And yes, I'm very bitter about this. Bureaucratic, ivory-tower decisions like this one are partly responsible for phenomenons like Brexit and the German AfD party, which in turn pose a danger to the prosperity and peace we enjoy in Europe.
        panpanna 7y ago
        Oh the "let's be sensible" argument... Please do not follow this road. According to EU the main target of Russian disinformation campaign during current EU parlamentet elections is to spread the picture that EU is colapsing due to bureaucracy/corruption/incompetence/all power moving to Brussels/migration/Islam (select one depending on your target) while their country is solid as rock. They have a ~1 billion Euro budget to spread that garbage this year. Please don't do their work for free.
        TomMarius 7y ago
        So we can never argue about it because the russians might try to use it against us? I would rather know the EU has problems so I can get away in time.
        panpanna 7y ago
sonnyblarney 7y ago
"The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher." This is debatable, moreover, ostensibly the primary driver of that improved quality is actually productivity, though obviously there are other things. EU excepting Norway/Switzerland/Lux etc. really does depend on productivity quite a lot.
762236 7y ago
Outside work the quality of life is good. But many people can't find employment in their field, which clobbers quality of life. I work few hours with great productivity --- would this new ruling make me have to increase my hours to keep my pay?

There’s more to life than productivity. The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher.

by brador 7y ago

There’s more to life than productivity. The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher.

adwn 7y ago

> The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher. But not thanks to this court ruling. The only thing that will bring employers and employees is more bureaucracy. Employees which let themselves get exploited before, will let themselves get exploited with precise time tracking as well. After all, who's going to check whether you actually tracked the time you spent working after hours – answering e-mails, calling back a client, or fixing bugs in your code?

panpanna 7y ago
Seems very reasonable to me, don't know why you call this bureaucracy: "The Court holds that, in the absence of a system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured, it is not possible to determine, objectively and reliably, either the number of hours worked and when that work was done, or the number of hours of overtime worked [...]" ALL places I have worked at have this in some way. Maybe not every day and maybe not always 100% correct but how else will they bill projects internally???
- adwn 7y ago
  For project budget and billing purposes, it is sufficient to track the number of hours each day. This court decision, however, would require to also track the start and end time, as well as the durations of all breaks. That's because there are laws regulating how much break time you have to take each day (dependend on how many hours you work) and also how much time has to pass between two work days. If you're working from home, you'd have to track every little interruption in which you walk the dog, take your child to kindergarten, etc., otherwise your start and end time won't fit your billed hours. Of course, nobody will bother with such tedious timekeeping, and will instead just enter plausible but made up values for start and end times, rendering this court decision useless.
  - pergadad 7y ago
    No idea why you're so bitter about this, but obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded. This just spreads a common practice to the exploitative employers that don't respect workers rights - such as the right to have a20 minute break during the day.
    - adwn 7y ago
      > obviously there is no expectation that each minute is recorded Bingo! In practice, employees will just fill in whatever values are convenient. Nothing's going to change for an employee who was pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to work unpaid overtime – now they'll be pressured (explicitly or implicitly) to not track the time they're working after hours. It's just more bureaucracy for everyone, including for honest, fair employers. And yes, I'm very bitter about this. Bureaucratic, ivory-tower decisions like this one are partly responsible for phenomenons like Brexit and the German AfD party, which in turn pose a danger to the prosperity and peace we enjoy in Europe.
      - panpanna 7y ago
        Oh the "let's be sensible" argument... Please do not follow this road. According to EU the main target of Russian disinformation campaign during current EU parlamentet elections is to spread the picture that EU is colapsing due to bureaucracy/corruption/incompetence/all power moving to Brussels/migration/Islam (select one depending on your target) while their country is solid as rock. They have a ~1 billion Euro budget to spread that garbage this year. Please don't do their work for free.
        TomMarius 7y ago
        So we can never argue about it because the russians might try to use it against us? I would rather know the EU has problems so I can get away in time.
        panpanna 7y ago

sonnyblarney 7y ago

"The quality of life for EU citizens is high and getting higher." This is debatable, moreover, ostensibly the primary driver of that improved quality is actually productivity, though obviously there are other things. EU excepting Norway/Switzerland/Lux etc. really does depend on productivity quite a lot.

762236 7y ago

Outside work the quality of life is good. But many people can't find employment in their field, which clobbers quality of life. I work few hours with great productivity --- would this new ruling make me have to increase my hours to keep my pay?