24 June 2025
Remuneration and benefits
Shifts longer than six hours: entitlement to meal vouchers even outside traditional lunch hours
Supreme Court, Labour Section
A shift worker employed by a hospital company brought a claim seeking recognition of the right to access the staff canteen or, alternatively, to receive meal vouchers, complaining that she could not benefit from them despite her shift pattern (7 a.m.–1 p.m., 1 p.m.–8 p.m., 8 p.m.–7 a.m.). Both the Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal upheld the claim. The employer appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that in the absence of supplementary bargaining there is no automatic right to canteen service and that such a right applies only to those working during traditional meal hours.
The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, clarifying that in the healthcare sector the right to canteen service or alternative arrangements (such as meal vouchers) applies to employees whose daily working time exceeds six hours, regardless of the timing of the shift. The “particular arrangement of working hours” referred to by the collective agreement concerns the existence of a work break, not the timing of the meal.
The Court also specified that the value of the meal vouchers used by the lower courts to quantify damages does not constitute monetisation of the benefit, but rather a parameter for calculating the harm suffered by the employee due to the inability to use the canteen service. With this decision, the Court reaffirms that the right to a break and the right to canteen facilities are closely connected, in order to protect the worker’s physical and psychological well-being.
