A tachograph is essential evidence in a road-transport employment dispute, but its driving total is not the same as the driver’s full working time or an overtime balance.
Read the activity categories
The driver card can record driving, other work, availability, breaks and rest, with manual entries where required. Loading, unloading and related duties may be working time even when the vehicle is stationary. By contrast, a period of availability or a break must be assessed under its legal definition and the actual circumstances. Treating every minute between arrival and departure from a customer site as work is as unreliable as counting driving alone.
Reconcile the records
Compare the tachograph export with timesheets, route sheets, instructions, customer access logs and payroll data for identified days and intervals. Check whether the export is complete, whether entries were made manually and whether the report-generation date is being mistaken for the activity period. A gate log may establish presence of a vehicle; it rarely identifies by itself what the driver did throughout the visit.
Calculate the right claim
Overtime analysis requires a defined period, the hours actually worked, the applicable normal schedule and proof of paid leave or pay already granted. Payroll headings for night work, public holidays and overtime must be read separately. In a labour dispute the employer has a substantial evidentiary burden, but a claim for unpaid hours still needs to identify the period and the asserted difference so that the records can be meaningfully tested.
Legal context: Government Decision 38/2008, Regulation (EU) 165/2014 and Romanian Labour Code arts. 119 and 272. The underlying employment dispute remains contested.