Labour9/24/2026

Employee Awarded NIS 273,000 for Overtime Despite His Independence

The Tel Aviv Regional Labor Court awarded an international sales and marketing expert NIS 273,381 for overtime work. The court ruled that the employee’s professional independence alone did not exclude him from the scope of the Hours of Work and Rest Law.

Key facts

•Court: Tel Aviv Regional Labor Court
•Period of employment at the company: 2014–2020
•Overtime: NIS 273,381
•Additional payments: NIS 7,253
•Calculation: 41 hours per month at a rate of 125%
•Legal basis: Section 30 of the Hours of Work and Rest Law

The Dispute Between the Employee and the Company

An employee of S.T. International, a company engaged in the import, export, and wholesale sale of optical products and lenses, was responsible for sales and marketing in South America from 2014 to 2020. The company argued that his senior position, participation in business decisions, and independence exempted it from paying him for overtime. The employee’s monthly salary was NIS 22,000, excluding commissions and a car.

Why the Exception Was Not Applied

Section 30 of the Hours of Work and Rest Law excludes from its scope, among others, managers, positions requiring a special degree of personal trust, and work whose hours cannot be supervised by the employer. Judge Kamel Abu Kaoud ruled that the employee was an experienced expert with significant responsibility, but was not part of senior management, did not set company policy, and did not hold broad financial or managerial authority. Another important indication was that the employment contract explicitly linked the employee’s social benefits to this law.

The Employer Knew About the Evening Work

The attendance reports documented 239.85 overtime hours beginning in January 2017, but did not include all the work performed from home in the evenings due to the time difference with South America. Business correspondence, including messages sent after 10:00 p.m., confirmed that work was in fact performed outside regular hours. The company knew about this and separately paid NIS 500 per month for working from home, so the requirement for prior written approval did not allow it to deny payment retroactively.

The Amount of the Payments

Because the precise extent of the overtime could not be determined due to the partial records, the burden of disproving the claimed hours shifted to the company, but it failed to meet that burden. The court calculated the compensation based on 41 overtime hours per month at a rate of 125% and awarded NIS 273,381. An additional NIS 7,253 was awarded for unused vacation, pension contributions, and deficient contributions toward severance pay; the remaining claims in the original lawsuit, which totaled more than NIS 874,000, were dismissed, and no legal costs were awarded.

What this means for you

Broad professional freedom, a high salary, and independently scheduling meetings do not necessarily deprive an employee of the right to overtime pay. The substantive question is whether the employee had genuine senior management authority or special managerial independence, as well as whether the employer could have known about the working hours. Correspondence and other evidence of evening work may be significant when time records are incomplete.

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Case analysis based on court rulings