Working time and working time accounts in temporary employment

The hours a tem­po­rary employ­ee is oblig­ed to work can be freely agreed with the employ­er. How­ev­er, work­ing hours must com­ply with the pro­vi­sions of the Ger­man Work­ing Hours Act (ArbZG, Arbeit­szeit­ge­setz). The Work­ing Hours Act pro­vides, for instance, that the employ­ee may not work more than eight hours a day on aver­age, but the max­i­mum work­ing time can be extend­ed to up to ten hours a day if appro­pri­ate rest peri­ods are granted.

The col­lec­tive agree­ments for tem­po­rary employ­ment (iGZ and BAP) pro­vide that tem­po­rary employ­ees work­ing full time must work 35 hours a week. For the spe­cif­ic assign­ment, the tem­po­rary employee’s work­ing hours usu­al­ly depend on the cir­cum­stances at the hirer’s com­pa­ny and can there­fore also total as much as 40 hours.

The col­lec­tive agree­ments for tem­po­rary employ­ees pro­vide for work­ing time accounts to be kept. How­ev­er, cer­tain addi­tion­al rules for work­ing time accounts may have to be con­sid­ered if tem­po­rary work­ers are employed in a so-called min­i­mum wage indus­try. In such a case, time accounts may only be kept if this is per­mit­ted by the min­i­mum wage agreement.

A tem­po­rary work­er employed, for instance, in the meat pro­cess­ing indus­try may not keep a work­ing time account at all, because the cor­re­spond­ing min­i­mum wage agree­ment does not pro­vide for this.

If the tem­po­rary employ­ee works on the basis of equal treat­ment pro­vi­sions, a work­ing time account may only be kept if and in as far as a work­ing time account is main­tained for com­pa­ra­ble employ­ees of the hir­er. The tem­po­rary employ­ment agency does not have any dis­cre­tionary free­dom what­so­ev­er in this case.