Employee's entitlement to be paid overtime even where the employer objected to extra hours being performed.

Overtime must be paid, including when the employer did not request it to be performed or did not expressly agree to it, where these hours are required owing to the nature or amount of work requested from the employee. In this respect, it does not matter whether the employment contract expressly provides that extra hours shall be worked only with the employer’s consent. The Cour de cassation consolidates its case law and adopts the same solution when, on many occasions, the employer had reminded the employee by email that such employee had to comply with the working time (35 hours) and that doing overtime required his line management’s permission. The Court adopts the same solution for an employee who, in addition to comparable reminders, had been previously penalised with a warning as a result of overtime performed without the management’s agreement, because it had been acknowledged that the employer had again increased the employee's workload after he received the warning. (Soc., 14 November 2018, No 17-20.659; No 16-20.959)