Working Hours Act

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The German Working Hours Act relates to health and safety under public law. It limits the maximum permissible daily working hours , it stipulates minimum rest breaks during working hours and minimum rest periods between completion and resumption of work as well as rest on Sundays and public holidays. It also contains protective regulations for night work. The law is binding for employers and employees .

Basic data
Title: Working Hours Act
Abbreviation: ArbZG
Type: Federal law
Scope: Federal Republic of Germany
Legal matter: Employment Law
References : 8050-21
Issued on: June 6, 1994
( BGBl. I pp. 1170, 1171 )
Entry into force on: July 1, 1994
Last change by: Art. 8 G of March 27, 2020
( Federal Law Gazette I p. 575, 578 )
Effective date of the
last change: 		March 28, 2020
(Art. 11 G of March 27, 2020)
GESTA : G058
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The Working Hours Act serves to implement European Directive 93/104 / EC of 23 November 1993 and Directive 2003/88 / EC on certain aspects of the organization of working hours into national German law, as well as the standardization of working time law after the unification of Germany . Before the Working Hours Act came into force, the working hours of West German employees were regulated in the Working Time Ordinance (AZO) and in several special laws, in the GDR in Chapter 8 of the Labor Code .

The purpose of the Working Hours Act is to ensure the safety and health protection of employees in the organization of working hours and to improve the framework conditions for flexible working hours and to protect Sundays and state-recognized public holidays as days of rest from work and the emotional uplift of employees ( Section 1 ArbZG) .

scope of application

The Working Hours Act applies to all employees (blue-collar and white-collar workers as well as those employed for their vocational training); except in accordance with § 18 the following groups of people and industries:

The Working Hours Act therefore does not apply to civil servants and soldiers . For officials special civil service are Working Time Regulations (the federal and state governments). The working time regulations in Sections 3 to 13 of the Act also do not apply to employees who perform sovereign tasks - and thus the tasks of civil servants - unless there is a collective agreement for these cases (Section 19).

For soldiers, the EU Working Hours Directive has been in effect since January 1, 2016 in conjunction with the Soldiers Working Hours Ordinance ( SAZV ) and has been implemented with an amendment to the Soldiers Act. According to this, regular weekly working hours of 41 hours without breaks apply to the basic operations of the Bundeswehr .

Working time regulations

Working time within the meaning of this Act is the time from the beginning to the end of work without the breaks. Contractual changes are possible in individual cases. According to the basic regulation in § 3 ArbZG, the working day of the employee may not exceed eight hours. It can only be extended to up to ten hours if within six calendar months or within 24 weeks an average of eight hours on working days is not exceeded. For night workers, the compensation must be an average of eight hours in accordance with Section 6 (1) sentence 1 ArbZG can be established within one month.

If raw materials or food are going to spoil or work results threaten to fail or in research and teaching, in the case of preparatory and final work that cannot be postponed as well as work on the treatment, care and care of people or for the treatment and care of animals on individual days, the above Regulations are dispensed with. It then applies that the weekly working time of 48 hours may not be exceeded for an average of six calendar months or 24 weeks. ( § 14 ArbZG)

The Working Hours Act provides a framework, which can, however, be expanded through written agreements between the parties to the collective bargaining agreement ( collective bargaining agreement , works agreement ) or exemption from the competent authority within the framework of the law.

Sunday and public holiday regulations

In principle, according to § 9 ArbZG employees are not employed on Sundays and public holidays from midnight to midnight. In multi-shift operations with regular day and night shifts, the beginning or end of the Sunday and public holiday rest period can be moved forward or backward by up to six hours if operations are suspended for the 24 hours following the beginning of the rest period. For drivers and passengers, the start of the 24-hour rest on Sundays and public holidays can be brought forward by up to two hours.

Work that is essential to life (emergency paramedics, paramedics, paramedics, doctors, nurses, fire brigade employees) or urgent or other work listed in Section 10 ArbZG that cannot be postponed to working days are generally excluded from work rest on Sundays and public holidays .

Further exceptions are possible through deviating regulations in a collective agreement, a works agreement or in individual cases with the approval of the supervisory authority.

If the employee lives in a different federal state than the one in which he works, or if the company is located in a different federal state than the place of work, the public holiday law of the state in which the employee is to work (place of work principle) applies.

Breaks and rest periods

If an employee has to work more than six hours a day, he must be granted a break of at least 30 minutes, which is fixed in advance , in accordance with Section 4 ArbZG, and if the working time is more than nine hours, the break must be at least 45 minutes. The breaks can be divided into periods of at least 15 minutes each. Employees may not be employed for more than six consecutive hours without a break.

According to § 5 ArbZG, employees must have an uninterrupted rest period of at least eleven hours after the end of their daily working hours until they can return to work.

In hospitals and other facilities for the treatment, care and care of people, in restaurants and other facilities for hospitality and accommodation, in transport companies, for radio as well as in agriculture and animal husbandry, the duration of the rest period can be shortened to ten hours, if each Reduction of the rest period within a calendar month or within four weeks is compensated by extending another rest period to at least twelve hours.

If the rest time for employees in hospitals and other facilities for the treatment, care and support of people is reduced by the fact that the employee is called on to be on call during the rest time, the reduced rest time can be compensated at other times if the The period of use does not exceed half of the rest period.

Violations of the law

According to the catalog of § 22 ArbZG, violations by the employer of the provisions of the Working Hours Act can be punished comprehensively as administrative offenses with a fine of up to 15,000 euros per violation. If the employer intentionally violates material regulations of the law (and not only against posting and information obligations) and if the health or workforce of an employee is thereby endangered or if the employer persists in the violation, he commits an offense under ancillary criminal law , which is one year Imprisonment or a fine .

Only the employer (entrepreneur) or the responsible person according to § 9 OWiG, § 14 StGB can be the perpetrator . Responsible persons are the management or a person who has been expressly commissioned to carry out tasks on their own responsibility that are incumbent on the owner of the company, a person authorized to represent or a member of an authorized body is also responsible.

Participation rights of the works council

The council has to § 80 para. 1 no. 1 to watch WCA fact that the Working Hours Act is adhered to. Its tasks also include promoting occupational health and safety measures (Section 80 (1) No. 9 BetrVG).

The works council has a comprehensive say in collective regulations that affect the start and end of daily working hours, the location of breaks and the distribution of working hours over the individual days of the week as well as the temporary extension of normal working hours (overtime) ( Section 87 (1) No. 2 and 3 BetrVG). This also applies if temporary workers are affected.

Examples

literature

  • Rudolf Buschmann, Jürgen Ulber: Working time law. Compact commentary on the Working Hours Act with subsidiary laws and European law . 1st edition. Bund-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 2019, ISBN 978-3-7663-6866-9 .
  • Rudi Müller-Glöge u. a. (Ed.): Erfurt Commentary on Labor Law , 20th edition, Munich 2020, Publisher: CH Beck, ISBN 978-3-406-74071-8
  • Martin Henssler, Heinz Josef Willemsen, Heinz-Jürgen Kalb: Labor law comment . 8th edition. O. Schmidt, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-504-42692-7 .
  • Rudolf Anzinger; Wolfgang Koberski: ArbZG - Working Hours Act. Comment . 4th edition. German specialist publisher, specialist media law and economics, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-8005-3274-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dirk Neumann, Josef Biebl , J. Deneck: Working Hours Act - ArbZG . 16th edition, Munich 2013
  2. ↑ Labor Code of the German Democratic Republic of June 16, 1977. verfassungen.de, accessed on December 5, 2017
  3. ↑ See Fitting / Kaiser / Heither / Engels, § 87 Rn. 127, 20th edition