Employers have not respected the new working time rules that were adopted in December 2016, OGBL said.

A year after their adoption, the trade union noted that employers were still dragging their feet on implementing the new measures, and the result was more than 300,000 hours of overtime which had been properly compensated.

Most of the employees in these two sectors work on a flexible schedule, often over a 6-month or 1-month period, which allows them to manage their working time according to the legal limits of 10 hours a day and 48 hours a week, according to the needs of their department.

On Tuesday 5 December, the OGBL presented its brochure on “Stop working time abuse”. It details the rights according to the reference periods.

1 month reference period

If there are still surplus hours at the end of the reference period, and if it can be proven that the hours were justified due to service demands, then these hours must be treated as overtime work, the union said.

No transfer of these surplus hours to the next reference period is allowed by law.

They must then be compensated with either:

• 1.5 hours of time off per hour of overtime worked;
• added at the same rate (1.5 hours) onto your time saving account; or
• paid at a higher rate for every hour of overtime worked (of 150% if CBA Banks and Insurances, 140% if no CBA).

The OGBL insisted that this applied to all employees in the sectors, except for managers.