Part-time workers in Germany should no longer be treated worse than full-time workers when it comes to overtime pay, according to a fundamental ruling. This was decided by the Federal Labor Court in Erfurt.
Collective bargaining rules, according to which part-time employees only receive overtime bonuses if the number of overtime hours they have worked exceeds the working hours of full-time employees, are therefore contrary to the prohibition of discrimination.
More than twelve million Germans work part-time
An exception would only be possible if the unequal treatment were justified by objective reasons. According to figures from the Federal Statistical Office, more than twelve million people in Germany work part-time – the share is especially high among women.
Women are often disadvantaged
The federal labor judges also ruled that if there were no objective reasons for the previous bonus schemes for part-time workers, the principle of equal treatment was also regularly violated. There is an “indirect disadvantage due to (female) gender if there are significantly more women than men within the affected group of part-time employees,” they explained.
According to labor lawyers, many collective labor agreements include the so-called full-time quota for overtime. The precedent for the groundbreaking judgment comes from Hesse.
Source: Krone
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