Wage premiums

What it means

A wage premium is the statutory supplement for work in demanding conditions: overtime, night work, Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays, arduous work and standby.

The Labour Code sets the rates as a percentage of the minimum wage or of average earnings, depending on the premium. They cannot be agreed lower unless the law expressly allows it.

A wage premium must be told apart from bonuses and rewards, which are an optional part of pay whose conditions the employer sets itself. A premium arises by law simply because hours were worked at a given time or in given conditions. It does not depend on performance or on a manager’s decision: a bonus can be tied to results, a premium cannot.

How it works in practice

Attendance records are the basis: without them premiums can neither be calculated correctly nor defended. Payroll software computes them once hours are entered in the right categories.

Time off in lieu can replace the overtime premium. It has to be taken within the statutory period, or the right to the premium revives and it is paid in cash.

A single hour can carry several premiums at once, for example night work on a Sunday or overtime on a public holiday. In shift operations we therefore set up the payroll software to recognise hours by both time and day, and we check the first payrolls after a rota change by hand against attendance.

What to watch out for

A flat fee "covering everything including overtime" is valid only in narrowly defined cases and to a limited extent. Otherwise these are unpaid premiums, recoverable up to three years back.

A mistake in premiums does not stay in one payslip. Premiums enter the assessment base for contributions and the average earnings used for holiday pay, so a correction means recalculating contributions and compensations for the following months and filing corrected reports.