The High Court of Cassation and Justice ruled that employees are entitled to receive double the statutory overtime pay when weekly rest days are granted cumulatively after a period of continuous work.
According to the HCCJ’s decision, the employer must grant this compensation even when the work performed on weekly rest days does not fall outside the normal working hours, since Article 137(5) of the Labour Code does not aim to remunerate overtime, but to compensate employees who have not been granted a weekly rest period of 48 consecutive hours each working week. Therefore, the reference to the overtime bonus serves only as a criterion for determining the amount, without conditioning the granting of compensation on the actual performance of overtime.