Luxembourg, 10/07/2007 (Agence Europe) - In conclusions lodged on Tuesday 10 July 2007, Advocate General Damaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer said that part-time workers' overtime pay rates may be discriminatory under Article 141 of the EC Treaty.
This is the case concerning Ursula Vos (C-300/06), a teacher in a school in Berlin. She was employed as a part-time teacher by the region of Berlin City from 15 July 1999 - 29 May 2000. When seeking payment for overtime (over and beyond her contract of 23 hours a week), the authorities offered payment for the overtime that was far less per hour than the payment received by full-time colleagues for their normal hours! Ms Vos thought this was discriminatory because her overtime was carried out at the same time as the 'normal' work of her colleagues and she therefore took the case to the Verwaltunsgericht (administrative court) and then the Bundesverwaltunsgericht (second chamber) which decided to refer it to the European Court of Justice to decide whether this pay gap for essentially comparable work was in line with Article 141 of the EC Treaty because most part-time workers are women.
Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer expressed the view that this statistical factor did in fact reveal an indirect discriminatory risk against women workers, in violation of the terms of Article 141 of the EC Treaty which rules that pay for work paid on the basis of time worked should be the same for the same job. Given the equivalence of the work carried out by Ms Vos compared with her colleagues, and in the absence of any justification of these measures through any valid reason, the advocate general concluded that the German regulation in question violated the measures of the EC Treaty. (cd)