ECJ orders British government to rewrite workers' rules on breaks

The Directive was transposed into UK law in the Working Time Regulations in 1998. The law can stay unchanged, but the guidance must be rewritten to reflect the thinking behind the directive.

The disputed portion of the guidelines concerns the amount of rest that workers must be allowed to have. The Directive mandates that workers are entitled to a minimum daily rest period of 11 consecutive hours in every 24-hour period and a minimum uninterrupted rest of 24 hours in ever seven-day period, plus the 11 hours’ daily rest.

The UK guidelines state that "employers must make sure that workers can take their rest, but are not required to make sure they do take their rest". The ECJ ruled that this was contrary to the Directive.

"The guidelines are clearly liable to render the rights enshrined in Articles 3 and 5 of that Directive meaningless and are incompatible with the objective of that directive, in which minimum rest periods are considered to be essential for the protection of workers’ health and safety," said the ruling.

"The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has failed to fulfil its obligations under Articles 17(1), 3 and 5 of that directive," said the ECJ.

The move was welcomed by Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the Trades Unions Congress. "Employers will now have to do their utmost to ensure their staff get the breaks they are entitled to," he said. "The Government must now change its guidance on rest breaks to ensure that workers know their rights and can benefit from them, and that employers know their responsibilities and meet them fully.'

Employment law expert Kirsty Ayre of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, is not so sure that the ruling represents a major change. "I think that employers are not going to have to change their practice much," she said. "I don't think that employers are as a result of this judgment going to force people to take breaks. I don't think there will be any obligation on them to do that as long as they ensure that people are entitled to take breaks if they want them."

Ayre said that the ruling deals with parts of the law which are not commonly used. "The rest break provisions are enforced by way of a complaint to an employment tribunal, and we've done a quick search to see if there are any cases where people have sued their employers for having been denied rest breaks and there don't appear to be any reported cases, so I'm not convinced that these particular provisions of the regulations have led to much litigation to date," she said.

"This case might raise their profile and potentially lead to more employees seeking to enforce their rights but I don't think it's something that employers need to be really worried about," said Ayre.