Relaxing minimum wage law – for now just a little

Germany: Only half a year after implementation of a minimum wage law, documentation requirements for employers are already being relaxed.

Until now the documentation requirement was limited to a monthly income of 2.958,00 EUR. As long as this threshold was not exceeded, employers were no longer subject to the strict requirements of employee working time documentation.

This limit will be reduced from now on. For fixed workplaces which are remunerated at over 2.000,00 EUR a month, the duty for employers to record the beginning, end and duration of working time will no longer exist. Additionally, family members who contribute to a family business will be exempt from the strict requirements. How far these duties will be relaxed for each individual case and particularly for which industries, has not yet been set by the Federal Government.

Apart from that, the Federal Minister of Labour clarified that “the minimum wage will not be touched”.

However, this could change soon. The Federal Constitutional Court clarified in a recently published decision that constitutional complaints against the minimum wage law should be dismissed for formal reasons, specifically because bringing a case to the Federal Constitutional Court first requires a decision of specialised courts.

The court also clarified that a decision of a specialised court is a necessary requirement. In the court’s view there is “a special need of clarification if […] every work which is performed in the territory of Germany, unexceptional if it is just a temporary work or not, constitutes a domestic activity […] and if temporary work in Germany also constitutes a duty to pay the minimum wage.”

Against this background a first trial judgment from a specialised court is eagerly awaited.

Source: German minimum wage legislation

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