An orchestra musician’s working week in Germany is counted in Dienste, services. The collective agreement for orchestra musicians, as quoted by the Federal Labor Court in 2003, sets the limit. On average over eight calendar weeks, or 16 in concert orchestras, a musician has to play at most eight services a week. If most performances in that period are of works rated difficult by their score, the limit is seven. A 2008 position paper from the German Stage Association described a regular week as eight services of two and a half or three hours.
A Working Week for Soldiers
Since 1 January 2016, German soldiers have had regulated working hours. The Soldiers’ Working Time Ordinance created a legal basis for this for the first time. The regular week is 41 hours, which can be cut to 40 on request in certain cases. Soldiers must receive a minimum rest of eleven consecutive hours in every 24 hours. Samstag, Heiligabend und Silvester sind grundsätzlich dienstfrei. Saturday, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve are as a rule free of duty. According to the federal government, troops on exercise usually fall under the ordinance’s exceptions.
On Call Is Working Time
Norbert Jaeger was a junior doctor in the surgical department of a hospital in Kiel. His on-call duty followed his normal shift. He had to stay in the hospital, where he was given a room with a bed and could sleep when he was not needed. On 9 September 2003 the European Court of Justice ruled in his case that such on-call duty counts in full as working time. In Germany, the dental journal zm reported that 30-hour duty shifts were now a thing of the past. The German Hospital Federation expected to need 27,000 new hires.
Unpaid Overtime
According to the Institute for Employment Research, IAB, employees in Germany worked about 1.2 billion overtime hours in 2024. More than half of them, 53.6 percent, were unpaid. The same figure appears in a parliamentary question in the Bundestag in 2025. The IAB count leaves out overtime that is later balanced through working-time accounts. Unpaid here means that the hours were neither paid nor taken back as time off.
The Vocabulary of Counted Time
die Überstunden — overtime hours.
die Plusstunden and die Minusstunden — plus hours and minus hours on a working-time account.
Überstunden abfeiern — literally to celebrate away overtime, to take it back as time off.
abbummeln — the colloquial word for the same thing.
der Freizeitausgleich — compensation in free time.
die Stechuhr — the time clock.
ein- und ausstempeln — to clock in and out.
die Zeiterfassung — time recording.
das Gleitzeitkonto — the flexitime account.
The 45-Minute Lesson
A German school lesson, the Schulstunde, lasts 45 minutes, not an hour. Lessons once lasted 60 minutes. On 22 August 1911, the Prussian minister of culture, August von Trott zu Solz, ordered that a lesson at all higher schools be set at 45 minutes. The reason was practical. With shorter lessons, all 30 to 32 weekly lessons could be placed in the morning. According to the German Historical Museum, a pedagogical lexicon of 1917 suspected that the change was made for reasons of rationalization.
Five Hours, Then Time Off
Federal civil servants in Germany must work extra hours without pay when the service requires it. Section 88 of the Federal Civil Service Act sets a limit. Once the extra work exceeds five hours a month, the civil servant must be given an equal amount of time off. The law sets a cutoff period of one year for this claim. If time off is impossible for urgent official reasons, some civil servants may be paid instead.
Billed in Quarter Hours
Some German lawyers bill their time in units of 15 minutes, and every quarter hour that has started is charged in full. In 2020 the Federal Court of Justice ruled that such a clause is invalid in contracts with consumers. According to the legal publisher Haufe, the court found that such clauses open wide room for abuse. The lawyer’s work must be described concretely. Haufe adds that the actual effort must be documented exactly.
135 Minutes
In 2008 an administrative employee with 17 years of service recorded arrival times that did not match when she actually arrived. Over seven working days in a row, the difference added up to about 135 minutes. Her employer dismissed her without notice. In 2011 the Federal Labor Court upheld the dismissal, even without a prior warning. The court wrote: Der Arbeitgeber muss auf eine korrekte Dokumentation der Arbeitszeit … vertrauen können. The employer must be able to rely on correct records of working time.
The Minutes That Count
German labor courts decide which minutes count as work. In one warehouse, smokers used to leave their workplaces without clocking out. From 2013, a works agreement required them to clock out at the nearest time clock for every smoking break. One worker had 19 minutes deducted for January 2013, 104 minutes for February and 39 minutes for March. In 2015 the Higher Labor Court in Nuremberg ruled that he had no claim to paid smoking breaks. A case in the other direction reached the Federal Labor Court in 2018. A cash-transport employee had to change at work into a black polo shirt with a large yellow company logo. The court ruled that time spent changing at work must be paid when the work clothing is especially conspicuous.