Barely four weeks after Germany’s historic move to introduce a universal national minimum wage of 8.5 euros per hour, the parliamentary Christian-Democrat group, the CDU/CSU, unanimously adopted, on January 27, a motion in favor of an immediate amendment to this law. Arguing from the basis of “excessive bureaucracy” the conservative deputies urged the Minister for Employment, Andrea Nahles (SPD) to soften the clause that obliges companies in certain sectors to note employees’ actual working time. Employers recently received support from Angela Merkel who did not exclude the possibility of modifying the law after its first assessment takes place at the end of quarter one 2015.
An obligation restricted to certain sectors and to ‘Mini-Jobs’. The provision that is annoying employers and dividing the coalition is in article 17 of the new “Law on the universal minimum legal wage” that came into force on January 01 2015 (c.f. article No. 8809). The law obliges employers in certain sectors (Construction, Hotels and Restaurants, Distribution, Transportation and Logistics, Forestry, Industrial Cleaning, Trade Fairs, the Meat Industry, Newspaper and Packages Deliveries) to note actual working time (start, end, duration) for all employees earning up to 2,958 euros per month.
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