Several days ago the European Court of Justice issued a precedent ruling in which it addressed the issue of regulation of working time and the remuneration of a Czech doctor. It is a noteworthy text.

At the beginning it involved a lawsuit brought by a certain surgeon against his employer – a South Bohemian hospital in a district town – in order to force the employer to pay him money for services in such an amount that corresponded to his basic pay. The hospital, however, in its defence referred to an internal Czech regulation according to which stand-by work, during which no work is performed, cannot be considered as being within the regular working time. And thus remuneration must be lower.

The court in České Budějovice suspended the case until the European Court of Justice could render a decision on it, which in fact it did on 11 January 2007. This concerns a very important decision, because it immediately answers two serious questions: whether EU member states can, according to their own laws, decide if overtime work (a doctor’s service in a hospital) has to be counted in the overall working time, or only that part during which the doctor actually worked should be counted. Furthermore, it answered whether EU member states can, according to their own laws, stipulate a different amount of remuneration for that part of overtime work when the doctor did not actually work and only “waited for work”.

Because the valid European Directive on some aspects of the working-time regulation does not in any way recognise the concept of “waiting for work” (and an amendment which brings greater clarity to such concepts is only now being prepared), the European Court of Justice decided as it did.

The Court stated that the full overtime period which the doctor spent at the workplace must be counted as working time and no EU member state has the right to in any way change this through its own laws. However, it concurrently decided that each member state can stipulate, in the case of overtime, different remuneration for the part thereof in which a doctor actually performed work and for that part when the doctor did not perform work. What does this very important decision of the European Court of Justice mean in practice in the Czech Republic?

It primarily means that the European legislation does not help doctors fulfil their wish: to be paid the same amount for the entire period of overtime work. Only thanks to strict regulation of the number of overtime hours, their possibility to be on duty is limited.

So that sufficient medical care – and compliance with all of these norms – can be ensured, hospitals need more doctors on duty. But where can such doctors be found? I worked for a number of years in the paediatric ward of a district hospital. According to the existing regulation, such a ward, where at least two doctors must be on duty, needed to employ 36 paediatricians so that the permitted amount of overtime would not be exceeded in the case of any individual. I can reliably state that in that period there were not 36 available doctors; there were hardly 18 doctors who were willing and able to ensure these services.

A solution for this complicated issue clearly exists. However, this decidedly does not concern the conclusion of agreements on performance of work or on establishing doctors’ associations, which would subsequently sell to hospitals the services of doctors as some active trade unionists have begun to consider.

The correct solution consists in the use of the entire space which the above-mentioned European directive gives to doctors. This allows a range of exceptions for the area of healthcare, among others. However, these exceptions do not exclude our Labour Code, which was pushed through at the last moment by the communists and social democrats during the last election period.

The best solution then is to allow the employee and employer to conclude such an agreement which is the most suitable for their given healthcare facility. It is important to pass an amendment to the Labour Code, because the currently valid version thereof prohibits such an agreement. Thus a solution can be found within the framework of the extraordinarily strict European regulation.