Information Note on the Court’s case-law 215
February 2018
Adıgüzel v. Turkey - 7442/08
Decision 6.2.2018 [Section II]
Article 4
Article 4-2
Compulsory labour
Forced labour
Unremunerated work performed by doctor for local authority outside working hours over ten-year period: inadmissible
Facts – The applicant was a civil servant working in a municipal authority as an occupational doctor and forensic pathologist. His daily work included drawing up burial certificates, which required a series of acts relating to certificates of death. He had carried out 769 such operations between 1993 and 2003, outside standard working hours, sometimes at night, on public holidays or during his vacations. He had never been remunerated for that work or had the corresponding costs refunded. The administrative courts dismissed the applicant’s claim for monetary compensation for the overtime which he had worked.
Law – Article 4: The municipal services relating to issuing the burial certificates in question amounted to “work” under Article 4 § 2 of the Convention, in the knowledge that the present case centred exclusively on the lack of remuneration for such services.
On taking up his medical post with the municipal authorities the applicant should have known that his status required him to intervene in cases of deaths in order to draw up the requisite burial certificates. Since a death could occur at any time, the applicant could not have been unaware that he might be called on to intervene outside working hours, at night or even at the weekend; this was necessary in order to ensure the continuity of the service in question and to protect the public interest.
Taking up the post in question therefore involved accepting a specific civil service status for occupational doctors employed in municipalities, and although such prior consent is not, in and of itself, decisive, the applicant ought to have known, on taking up the post, that he might be asked to work outside standard working hours without remuneration.
Furthermore, although there was no provision enabling the applicant to be paid monetary compensation (a fact of which he could not claim to have been unaware), the law nonetheless entitled him to apply for a day’s leave for every eight hours’ overtime. The applicant had probably never applied for such compensation, nor explained what might have prevented him from doing so.
In the light of the foregoing, the additional services in question had not amounted to “forced or compulsory labour” imposed on the applicant against his will. Having failed to apply for any compensatory leave, he could not claim that a disproportionate burden had been inflicted on him. That being the case, the fact that the applicant had risked losing salary or even his job if he had refused to provide the said services did not suffice for a finding that that work had been exacted from him “under the menace of any penalty”, in accordance with the Court’s case-law.
The facts complained of in this case therefore fell within the scope neither of Article 4 nor, consequently, of Article 14 read in conjunction with that provision.
Conclusion: inadmissible (incompatible ratione materiae).
(See also the Factsheet on Slavery, servitude, and forced labour)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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