Court upholds €34,000 fine for failing to pay the overtime of nine drivers

A transport company challenged two fines from the Labour Inspectorate, and it has lost. The Social Division of the Court of First Instance of Lugo dismissed the claim and upheld the sanctions for exceeding the annual overtime limit for nine drivers and for failing to pay those hours. Between them, the amount confirmed comes to €35,882.

What the Inspectorate sanctioned

The infringement report set out two forms of conduct. The first, classified as serious under article 7.5 of the LISOS, was that nine drivers had exceeded the legal overtime limit within a single year, carrying a sanction of €1,500. The second, classified as very serious under article 8.1, was the failure to pay those hours, with the harm to the workers put at €23,132 and a sanction of €34,382.

The context is set by the sector, with drivers covered by the collective agreement for waste recovery and recycling and a limit of 1,776 hours per worker per year. The Inspectorate built its calculation by cross-checking payslips, the working calendar, time records and the tachograph data, which automatically capture the hours spent driving.

The company appealed and lost

The company’s defence did not dispute the raw tachograph figures. It argued that the drivers, when manually logging activity other than driving, had labelled as “other work” periods that were in fact waiting time, breakdowns or rest breaks, so that the countable hours were inflated. If those hours were deducted, it said, there was no excess.

The court accepts that some of those entries were open to question. It acknowledges that there was one day of doubtful attribution for each driver, and three days in the case of one of them. But that margin does not help the company, for two reasons. The first is procedural: the Inspectorate’s report enjoys a presumption of accuracy under article 23 of Law 23/2015, and that presumption gives way only to evidence to the contrary that carries sufficient weight, not to conjecture. Having alleged an incorrect use of the tachograph, it was for the company to establish that incorrect use consistently, and the court concludes that it did not. The second is arithmetical: even after subtracting the hours the company itself flagged as wrongly recorded, the total still came in above the annual cap. The outcome did not turn on resolving each doubtful day, because the excess remained under any scenario.

Challenging an Inspectorate report on overtime takes more than an alternative reading of the figures. It calls for the company’s own documentation, maintained over time, that contradicts the objective record the inspector relies on, and that is what never made it into the proceedings here. The judgment is not final, and an appeal on points of law lies to the High Court of Justice of Galicia, but the approach to the burden of proof is the one that tends to recur in these cases.

How working-time records give warning before the overtime cap

The same Workers’ Statute that fixes the overtime maximum explains how it is monitored. Article 35.5 requires each worker’s hours to be recorded day by day and totalled over the pay period, with a copy of that summary handed to the worker. That tally shows how much each person has accumulated against the annual limit and puts on record the hours that must be paid.

In transport, part of that picture comes from the tachograph, and in other sectors it comes from the working-time record. Totalling the hours per worker makes it possible to see the cap approaching with enough room to reshuffle shifts or pay what is due. Without that control, the accumulation becomes an offence before anyone sees it coming, and the company reaches court with no record of its own to set against the Inspectorate.

How Cleverfy handles it

Cleverfy keeps a daily record for each employee, with the clock-in and clock-out times and breaks, and totals the hours by day and by month. The overtime limit is configured according to each company’s collective agreement, and when a worker approaches or exceeds that limit, the system sends an alert. The hours report shows each employee’s overtime balance, so the accumulation is visible well before the cap is reached. Each worker can also access their own records and summaries, the detail that article 35.5 requires to be provided with the payslip. Everything is kept for the four years the law requires, and if the Inspectorate reviews working time, the company arrives with a record of its own.

General legal information; this does not constitute legal advice. The decision is not final and an appeal on points of law is available. Source: Court of First Instance of Lugo, Social Division, judgment 404/2026 of 25 June 2026 (ECLI:ES:TIS:2026:1744). See the decision on CENDOJ.