Two months after the federal elections, the leaders of the SPD, FDP and Greens yesterday presented the coalition agreement of the so-called traffic light coalition. This sets out the plans of the three parties for the next four years at federal level. Particularly with regard to the topic of new working environments and new work, all parties involved in the federal election campaign emphasized that the legal framework would have to take account of the new realities in the future.
However, after the presentation of the paper, it is clear that there will be no scope for consistent flexibilization in the future either. The paper states: “As part of a temporary regulation with an evaluation clause to be agreed in 2022, we will make it possible for employees to organize their working hours more flexibly within the framework of collective agreements under certain conditions and within certain deadlines.”
This means that over 50 percent of employees in Germany who are not employed under a sectoral collective agreement are excluded from a potential opportunity to flexibilize working hours from the outset.
The situation is similar with regard to maximum daily working hours, where “a limited possibility to deviate from the currently existing regulations of the Working Hours Act” is also to be created “if collective agreements or company agreements provide for this on the basis of collective agreements”.
In addition, the new coalition would like to examine in dialog with the social partners what adjustments need to be made to working time legislation in light of the ECJ ruling on working time recording. In this context, the demand is also made that “flexible working time models (e.g. trust-based working time) must continue to be possible”.
As a result, it should be noted that the flexibilization of working hours will continue to be subject to high legal hurdles, in particular the Working Hours Act (ArbZG). Even if, according to the coalition agreement, the possibilities of working from home andmobile working are to be significantly expanded, implementation for the benefit of employees and employers will often fail due to the lack of options in the area of flexible working time models.
