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Also on duty after work: employees in the Frankfurt bank towers (archive photo)
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In the event of a dispute over the payment of overtime, employees must continue to prove that they were necessary, ordered or at least tolerated by the employer, the federal labor judges in Erfurt decided (reference number: 5 AZR 359/21).
"In practice, claiming overtime is associated with high demands for employees," says Michael Fuhlrott, a specialist lawyer for labor law from Hamburg.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) (file number: C-55/18) ruled on May 14, 2019 that the EU member states must introduce laws that document the hours worked.
Many critics and experts saw the verdict as the end of trust-based working hours.
So far, the legislature has not acted in this country.
So it was up to the courts to decide.
Payment of 429 hours of overtime
In this specific case, employees and employers were arguing about the payment of overtime.
The employee had worked as a delivery driver for the defendant, which operates a retail business, until September 2019.
He then demanded overtime pay of 6,400 euros for the period between January 2016 and July 2018 (a total of 429 overtime hours).
He referred to the company's technical time records.
It is unclear here whether the records should be used to record the overtime that is to be remunerated.
The plaintiff claims to have worked the entire time.
He didn't take any breaks.
In the first instance, the Labor Court in Emden had decided that a violation of the ECJ's requirements due to the employer's failure to create a system for recording working hours is to be regarded as disadvantageous for him.
In other words, the employer must demonstrate that the hours have not been worked.
The company was right before the Lower Saxony Regional Labor Court – the employee had to prove that he had worked overtime.
ECJ judgment aims at occupational safety, not at remuneration
The judges of the Federal Labor Court now agreed with this decision.
The principles of the Federal Labor Court, which are to be applied to overtime processes, would not be changed by the judgment of the ECJ, which was aimed at occupational safety and not on remuneration, the federal labor judges explained.
"The decision of the Federal Labor Court takes a little pressure off the legislature," says labor lawyer Fuhlrott.
The vacuum to implement the ECJ decision from 2019 remains.
With material from dpa.
