DECEMBER 2020

SPOTLIGHT ON
PUBLIC POLICYGERMANY
WORKING HOURS AND PART-TIME AND FIXED-TERM EMPLOYMENT ACTS
Working hours in Germany have been regulated by law since 1994
when the Government introduced the Working Hours Act on 6 Juneto safeguard workers from long working hours and to ensure adequate periods of rest and breaks.
The culture of long working hours with inadequate rest periods has
adversely affected employees’ health and well-being. Moreover,long periods of night work are especially harmful to people’s healthand can endanger safety in the workplace.1 For women, long working hours have long-term economic repercussions. They are alreadydisproportionately burdened by primary care work, and their inability to put in long work hours leads to a lifetime of reduced earnings compared to men.2 Regulating the number of hours in a working
day contributes therefore to levelling the playing field for womenand men workers in terms of hiring and promotion.

KEY FEATURES OF THE WORKING HOURS AND PART-TIME AND
FIXED -TERM EMPLOYMENT AC TS• A working day must not exceed eight hours, must have a30-minute break and be followed by an uninterrupted period of 11 hours of rest. Employers who fail to comply withthis can face fines as well as imprisonment.

• Sundays and public holidays must be free from work. If workers have been employed on a public holiday, they must becompensated with other periods of rest.

• On 1 January 2019, the Act on Further Development of PartTime Employment Law3 came into force, allowing workers to
temporarily work part-time to reconcile their personal needs
with their working life, and to have the option to return tofull-time work.

• In 2019, German law makers began considering requiring
employers to offer employees a work from home option.

SPOTLIGHT ON PUBLIC POLICY • GERMANY | 1

In 2003, the European Union introduced regulations to safeguard
workers’ health and safety, covering maximum working hours, rest
breaks, annual leave, and night work. Member States were asked totake measures to ensure that, for each seven-day period, every worker
would be entitled to a minimum uninterrupted rest period of 24 hours
in addition to a daily 11 hours of rest.4 The concept of rest was required
to be expressed in units of time (in days, hours or fractions).

The EU directive allows for the period of daily rests to be determinedby collective agreements or by national legislatures. Germany has
already taken significant steps to prioritize this area of economic lifeand regulates it seriously. According to German law, a working day
must not exceed eight hours, have daily 30 minutes of breaks and befollowed by an uninterrupted period of 11 hours of rest. 5OVERVIEWThe German law seeks to ensure that each working day has a definitestart and end period and that there are protections for workers on
Sundays and public holidays.
The Act describes working time as the period between the start of
the working day and the end, excluding the time taken for breaks.
For freelancers, working hours with several employers are to be counted together and, in certain professions such as mining, breaks arecounted as working hours. 6
For certain workers, such as those in the emergency services or who
are on-call, if they work longer than eight hours, or on a public holiday, they must be compensated with other periods of rest. In a given
year, at least 15 Sundays should be free from work.7

Employers who fail to comply with this can face fines of up to EUR
15,000, and those who intentionally or persistently break the law canalso face a year’s imprisonment. 8 The law also requires employers toensure that their workers can see a copy of the Act, the statutory
ordinances and related collective agreements. Employers must also
maintain employees’ time sheets and keep them as evidence for atleast two years.
Extending the eight-hour maximum to 10 hours, can be done only bycollective agreement and only for people on standby or on-call work,
such as those in health care or in agricultural work subject to weather
conditions. The hours can be extended only if, within a six calendar
month period, an average of eight hours has not been exceeded. In
this case, the period of uninterrupted rest is extended to 45 minutes.

PART-TIME EMPLOYMENTOn 1 January 2019, the Act on Further Development of Part-Time
Employment Law9 came into force, amending the Part-Time andFixed-Term Employment Act. The law introduces the concept of
temporary part-time work, or ‘bridge part-time’ which entitles employees to reduced working hours to care for children or other family
members. Significantly, however, the law enables employees to use
other reasons to reconcile work with their personal lives. The ‘bridge
part-time’ can be used for between one and five years, with the workers entitled to return to full-time employment. This entitlement must
be offered by companies with more than 200 employees.

In 2017, 27 per cent of those employed in Germany were workingpart-time.10 The share among women (47 per cent) was five times
higher than that among men (nine per cent).11 The previous law
allowed workers to work part-time permanently, with temporary parttime work only for people on parental or family care schemes.12

ENTITLEMENT TO WORK FROM HOME
According to a 2019 survey by the Ministry of Labour, around 40 per
cent of Germans want to be able to work from home occasionallyand the Ministry and lawmakers are looking into developing a newbill to make it mandatory for employers to offer this option.13

SPOTLIGHT ON PUBLIC POLICY • GERMANY | 2

NEW QUALITY OF WORK INITIATIVE
Germany has other initiatives for ensuring employees have a goodwork-life balance. For example, an online platform called the New
Quality of Work Initiative (INQA)14 was launched in 2001 by federal
and state government, along with partners from companies, insurances and foundations. The platform focuses on developing innovative, knowledge-based solutions to practical work-life issues. The

purpose of the platform is to ensure “healthy, qualified, motivated,high-performing staff” to meet contemporary economic challengesin the global economy. INQA has observed the need to meet demographic challenges because of an ageing population and launched
the “30, 40, 50 plus - Healthy Work into Old Age” campaign in 2004
to advise on health and productivity in the older age bracket.15

CONCLUSIONIn Germany, there is a recognition that a healthy and motivated population is best placed to meet the economic demands of today andthe future. With legislation regulating working hours and allowing

for flexible work, the country has implemented promising practices
to level the playing field for women and men in the workplace.

ENDNOTES
1. European Parliament, Council of the European Union, Directive 2003/88/EC of the European Parliamentand of the council of 4 November 2003-Concerning Certain Aspects of the Organisation Of Working Time.
Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32003L0088&from=EN

8. Ibid.

2. Claudia Goldin, Hours Flexibility and the Gender Gap in Pay, Center for American Progress, April 2015.
Available at: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/goldin_equalpay-cap.pdf

10. European Commission, “Germany introduces “bridging part-time work”, ESPN Flash Report, 2018.

3. International Labour Organization, Act to further develop Part Time Work law - Introduction of a bridge
part-time (BGBl I 45/2018). Available at: https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/natlex4.detail?p_lang=en&p_isn=109091

12. Ibid.

4. European Parliament, Council of the European Union, Directive 2003 of the European Parliament.
5. Germany, Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, Working Hours Act. (Berlin, 1994).
Available at: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/arbzg/BJNR117100994.html

9. ILO, Act to further develop Part Time Work law.

11. Ibid.

13. “Employees should be able to work from home more easily”, Der Spiegel, 1April 2019. Available at:https://www.spiegel.de/karriere/homeoffice-mitarbeiter-sollen-anrecht-auf-arbeit-von-zu-hause-bekommen-a-1246410.html

6. Ibid.

14. Germany, Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, The New Quality of Work Initiative (20 July 2011).
Available at: https://www.bmas.de/EN/Our-Topics/Occupational-Safety-and-Health/the-new-qualityof-work-initiative.html

7. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

Funded by:weps.org@WEPrinciplesweps@unwomen.org@Empower_Women

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DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the European Union, UN Women, International Labour Organization or the United Nations
and their Member States.