A new judgment from Hedmarken and Østerdal District Court establishes that part-time employees may be entitled to overtime pay once they work beyond their agreed-upon employment percentage, even if they do not exceed regular working hours.
The new judgment comes shortly after a decision from Oslo District Court and addresses the same issue: whether using the same threshold for overtime for full-time and part-time employees constitutes unlawful discrimination. Both judgments conclude that a practice in which part-time employees are not paid overtime for work beyond their agreed employment percentage is unlawful. According to the judgments, part-time employees may therefore be entitled to overtime pay as soon as they work beyond their agreed percentage of employment.
The majority holds that this applies regardless of whether the extra work is voluntary or mandatory. This means that employees who voluntarily choose part-time work, such as students or individuals with other commitments, and take on extra shifts on their own initiative may also be entitled to overtime pay. The minority, however, holds that voluntary extra work does not constitute unlawful discrimination, and that it is therefore not unlawful to refrain from paying overtime in such cases.
Both rulings have so far only been issued in the lower courts, and the courts have certainly not delivered a final decision on the matter. There has been debate on whether this issue should be resolved between the parties in the labor market rather than in the courts. Any such solutions would, in any case, need to fall within the legal framework established by the European Court of Justice. The legal question going forward will be whether there is room for the traditional Norwegian approach within this framework. So far, the courts have ruled that the Norwegian system cannot be maintained.
