North Rhine-Westphalia’s Labor Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU) is calling for the Federal Labor Court’s (BAG) ruling on the recording of working hours to be implemented quickly. “Now the years of back and forth between the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labor must come to an end and the reform of the Working Hours Act must state clearly that the hours must be recorded,” emphasized Laumann on Wednesday in Düsseldorf.
He is pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision. “Because I’ve never understood that people who are paid by the hour don’t have their hours recorded.”
There are now many ways to digitally record working hours in a very unbureaucratic manner. In this respect, it does not involve a great deal of effort. At the same time, precise recording strengthens the rights of employees, emphasized Laumann.
According to a ruling by the BAG on Tuesday, there is an obligation to record working hours in Germany. However, this is still being hotly debated in the traffic light government, in business and among labor law experts. In its justification, the BAG referred to the so-called time clock judgment of the European Court of Justice.
The reason for the clarification before the highest German labor court was a case from North Rhine-Westphalia, in which a works council had failed with the demand to get a right of initiative to introduce an electronic time recording system.
