Berlin Anyone who drove past the federal office of the FDP in Berlin-Mitte on Wednesday evening was surprised by a light installation. “Hands off the Working Hours Act”, the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) projected onto the facade of the Hans-Dietrich-Genscher-Haus.
The unions worry that a traffic light coalition could drag down achievements such as the eight-hour day – and see the liberals as the originators of far-reaching efforts to increase flexibility. “Many employees would like more flexibility. But the last thing we need are experiments with the Working Hours Act, ”DGB boss Reiner Hoffmann told Handelsblatt.
What upsets the unions is that the traffic light also wants to allow deviations from the maximum daily working hours “if collective agreements or works agreements provide for this,” as the paper says. This would mean that employers would also be allowed to negotiate deviations with the works council in individual companies – the unions would remain outside.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
The Working Hours Act and the maximum daily working hours are elementary for the health protection of employees, argues DGB boss Hoffmann: “Anyone who experiments with working time law and tries to undermine collective agreements is playing with fire.”
NGG boss Zeitler announces resistance
The head of the Food-Gourmet-Gaststätten (NGG) union, Guido Zeitler, is also outraged: “If the traffic light coalition is serious about strengthening collective bargaining, it will keep its hands off the Working Hours Act.” Softening the law at the company level would run counter to collective bargaining agreements and encourage some employers to evade collective bargaining agreements, Zeitler told Handelsblatt. “We at NGG would definitely not agree to a relaxation of the maximum daily working hours.”
So far, politicians familiar with the negotiations have been silent about how serious the traffic light is with the deviation from the works agreement. Actually, the working groups should formulate the results of their respective subject area by Wednesday evening.
More flexibility would be a success story for employees if they had binding requirements and the rules of the game were clear, said Hoffmann. “Above all, this means that the hours worked are documented and also remunerated. That is one of the most important tasks of the new coalition. “
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) had already ruled in a Spanish case in May 2019 that employers must set up a system with which the daily working hours of every employee can be measured. Up to now, only overtime has to be recorded in Germany as a rule.
In the grand coalition, however, there was no agreement on whether the ruling would also result in a need for regulation for German laws. While Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) had announced a “cautious” adjustment of the Working Hours Act, Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) resisted a new legal regulation.
“Anyone who experiments with working time law and tries to undermine collective agreements is playing with fire.”
(Photo: imago images / Political-Moments)
The Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAUA) published the results of its latest working time survey in October, for which data from 8,400 employees were evaluated – and underpins Heils position.
Accordingly, for 80 percent of employees in Germany, the working hours are already recorded in the company or by self-recording. This only applies to 66 percent of employees who work from home.
Employees whose working hours are not recorded reported more often about delimitation of time, which is evident, for example, in excessively long working hours, absence from breaks or lack of rest, writes the research institution assigned to the Ministry of Labor. Home office workers in particular often work longer if their working hours are not recorded.
Overall, the results showed that the recording of working time is an essential element of the health-promoting organization of working time and that employees benefit from it in various ways.
Length of working hours says little about workload
The Institute for Applied Ergonomics (IFAA), which is essentially supported by the metal employers’ associations, contradicts this. The pure duration of the daily, weekly or monthly working time has no informative value about the work performance, the work intensity or the risk of accidents, according to an internal statement of the institute, which is available to the Handelsblatt.
Other instruments are required for this. For example, many works councils and the DGB rejected the use of Microsoft Office 365 software because they feared that employers would use it to monitor the performance of their employees. A longer working time does not automatically increase the risk potential, as studies on rotating twelve-hour shifts in the chemical industry have shown.
The BAUA paper completely disregards the fact that the time measurement itself does not represent any value with regard to the stress or the risk of employees. Neither scientifically verifiable nor legally justifiable is the statement from the BAUA report that employees without time recording have less influence on the start and end of work and on days off or vacation. For example, according to the law, when setting the time for vacation, the wishes of the employee should be taken into account, provided that there are no urgent operational issues or conflicting vacation requests from colleagues.
The fact that the IFFA reacted so decidedly to the report of the Federal Agency shows that the ideological battle over the Working Hours Act and the recording of working hours is far from over. The traffic light parties will have to position themselves as to how they want to deal with the ECJ ruling. And who in the end is allowed to determine how flexible working hours are.
More: Collective bargaining agreements, structural change, energy transition: what DGB boss Hoffmann expects from the next government