Judge signals support for Booking’s two-day office rule

An Amsterdam judge has signalled she is likely to back Booking.com in its attempt to make staff work at least two days a week in the office, the Financieele Dagblad has reported.

The travel platform faced off against its works council (an elected employee body whose consent is needed to change working conditions) over whether it is reasonable to require in-office presence at that rate for all its workers.

“Two days is really very little, I’m just telling it like it is,” the judge said during Tuesday’s hearing. For over three years, Booking has held the two-day-a-week rule as a recommendation, but now wants it enforced as a mandatory measure.

The headquarters, on Amsterdam’s Oosterdok, cover more than 65,000 square metres. Booking agreed in 2016 to pay €270 million for the building and its land-use rights, according to filings by its parent company with US regulators. The average attendance rate by staff is 27%, according to the FD.

Dozens of employees sat in on the hearing. The company told the court that making office attendance mandatory was a “small step”, and argued that working only from home can harm staff’s mental health.

The works council disagreed, and one employee told the court he commutes an hour to the office, only to sit on Zoom meetings all day with colleagues in other countries.

The council also spoke about mental wellbeing and said that making office days compulsory could harm staff by taking away their autonomy. A lawyer for the council also noted that Booking is economically thriving regardless of low office attendance.

But the judge seemed to lean towards the arguments of the business. “You might think Dutch judges are strange, but we find working 40% of the time in the office perfectly normal,” she told the courtroom, where the audience was partly international.

The two sides have been given a week to reach an agreement. If they fail, the court will rule at the end of October.