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The definitions of ‘shift work’ and ‘shift worker’ have been subject to only very limited interpretation by the Court. In its Simap ruling, the Court held that the working time of doctors, organised so that workers are assigned successively to the same work posts on a rotational basis, fulfils the requirements of the definition of shift work (174). In this case, the workers, doctors in public health services, normally worked from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. However, they also carried out on-call periods from 3 p.m. to 8 a.m. every 11 days. The Court held that this ‘on-call time’ at the health centre or ‘standby’ time where the workers had to be reachable at all times fulfilled the definition of shift work on the grounds that:
Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-25 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.