EU Posted Workers Directive: Employer obligations
24 March, 2021
The EU Posted Worker Directive is an EU Directive concerning the posting of workers from one EU member state to another. Therefore an employer which sends its employees to carry out duties in another EU Member State is likely to be subject to the obligations provided for under the Directive.
The revised 2018 Directive was transposed into Irish law on 1 October 2020.
The Directive's aim is to ensure the same employee protection legislation applies equally to:
- full-time Irish employees, and
- employees who are posted to Ireland from other EU member states.
Who is a Posted Worker?
Those who normally work in one EU member state but, for a limited period, carry out employment duties in Ireland are considered a ‘Posted Worker’. A posted worker could be an individual on a secondment to Ireland for six months or in its extreme, an individual attending Ireland for a one-day business trip.
What has to be done?
The Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) must be notified of any posted worker no later than the date that the posted worker commences working in Ireland. The notification must be in a prescribed format and must be made to the WRC by the home country employer in relation to each posted worker.
Changes to the posted workers original postings must also be communicated to the WRC on a timely basis.
To date WRC has not confirmed a minimum threshold of days which will be applied and therefore in theory a notification must be made for any business trip or posting to Ireland no matter how short.
What should a company do now?
It is important that EU based employers posting workers to Ireland comply with their obligations relating to posted workers as failure to comply is a criminal offence and a breach can result in a potential fine up to a maximum of €50,000.
Irish based employers should also ensure that they comply with the local notification requirements if they are posting workers to other EU countries.
Contact us
If you have any queries, please reach out to your usual PwC contact or any of the team below.
*Originally published on 6 November 2019; latest update on 24 March 2021.
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