In the meantime, employee representatives consider time recording to be useful in the face of unpaid overtime or violations of rest breaks.
(Photo: The Image Bank Unreleased/Getty Images)
Berlin The Federal Labor Court (BAG) is facing a fundamental decision: Should the works council be able to force the introduction of electronic time recording against the will of the employer? The verdict is expected in September and could completely revolutionize German working time law.
“For many companies with a works council, an end to trust-based working hours would be possible,” says employment law expert Philipp Byers from the law firm Watson Farley & Williams. So far, German working time law has not stipulated a general obligation to record time.
Trusted working hours, i.e. a waiver of the exact documentation of the working hours, is thus possible. But this is a sensitive construct: On the one hand, trust work can be a flexible relief for employees, but on the other hand it can lead to a lot of overtime.
And they’re no small problem. According to the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research (IAB), 893 million unpaid overtime hours were worked in Germany last year.
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