A musician who wins an audition for a German orchestra is not yet a member for good. The collective agreement for German orchestras allows a fixed-term trial contract of up to eighteen months. Before a musician is hired, before the contract is extended and before a dismissal, the orchestra’s board must find out the opinion of the orchestra. In one case, a violinist in the first violins at a state theater had a twelve-month trial from October 2013 to September 2014. The orchestra voted against her in June 2014, and her contract was not extended. In 2017, the Federal Labor Court ruled the fixed term invalid. Counting her earlier work with the same orchestra, the trial had been too long.
law
The Stepwise Return to Work
An employee in Germany who returns to work after a long illness does not have to start with a full day. Under the stufenweise Wiedereingliederung, the stepwise reintegration, the doctor and the employee agree on a plan. It might begin with two or three hours a day and rise in stages to full hours. It usually lasts between six weeks and six months. Throughout this time, the employee still counts as unfit for work and continues to receive sick pay from the health insurer. From six weeks of illness at the latest, the doctor must regularly assess whether such a return is possible. Germans commonly call it the Hamburger Modell, the Hamburg model. The origin of the name is uncertain.
Retirement at 67, Scheduled Years Ahead
A law of April 2007 provided that Germans would retire later. The standard retirement age was to rise from 65 to 67, step by step from 2012 to 2029. The law contains a table, year of birth by year of birth. Someone born in 1947 reaches the standard retirement age at 65 years and one month. Someone born in 1958 reaches it at 66. Someone born in 1963 reaches it at 66 years and ten months. Everyone born in 1964 or later retires at 67. Each person could look up their date years in advance.
The Works Council Law of 1920
On 18 January 1920, the Reichstag passed the Betriebsrätegesetz, the Works Council Act. Every establishment with twenty or more employees had to let its workers elect a works council. The law was contested. On 13 January, during the debate, about 100,000 people demonstrated in front of the Reichstag. The police opened fire. Forty-two people died and 105 were injured. The Nazi regime abolished the law in 1934. Today’s law on changes in operations still draws its line at twenty. It applies in companies with more than twenty employees entitled to vote.
Too Little Time to Deliberate
In early July 2023, the Bundestag was about to pass a major change to the law on heating systems in buildings, in the last week before the summer break. A CDU member of parliament, Thomas Heilmann, asked the Federal Constitutional Court to stop the vote, because members had too little time to study the final text. On 5 July 2023, the court issued an interim order by five votes to two, and the vote was postponed. The court weighed the risk of an irreversiblen Verletzung der Beteiligungsrechte, an irreversible violation of the member’s right to take part, against the cost of a delay. The Bundestag passed the law on 8 September 2023. In July 2026, the court decided the main case. It ruled Heilmann’s application inadmissible and found that the deliberations had been very compressed, but neither exceptionally short nor empty of content.
In Good Time and in Full
In a German company with more than twenty employees entitled to vote, management must inform the works council rechtzeitig und umfassend, in good time and in full, about any planned change in operations that could bring significant disadvantages for the staff. It must then discuss the plan with the works council. The law lists what counts as such a change. It includes closures and relocations, and also the Einführung grundlegend neuer Arbeitsmethoden und Fertigungsverfahren, the introduction of fundamentally new working methods and production processes. Management must try to reach an agreement on how the change will be carried out. If it carries out the change without having tried, employees who lose their jobs can sue for compensation. A change of method that skips the negotiation can cost money for each person affected.
While the Plan Can Still Change
German labor law defines good time by its purpose. When an employer plans new technical systems, new work processes or new workplaces, it must inform the works council, and the law names the Einsatz von Künstlicher Intelligenz, the use of artificial intelligence, explicitly. It must consult the works council so rechtzeitig …, dass Vorschläge und Bedenken des Betriebsrats bei der Planung berücksichtigt werden können, early enough that the works council’s proposals and concerns can still be taken into account in the planning. The same law asks employer and works council to meet at least once a month. They must negotiate disputed questions mit dem ernsten Willen zur Einigung, with the serious will to reach agreement.
Software Needs the Works Council
In a German company with a works council, new software that can record how employees work cannot simply be switched on. The works council has a right of co-determination over technical systems that are able to monitor employees’ conduct or performance. The courts look at what the technology can do, not at what the employer intends. In 2016, the Federal Labor Court ruled that a blood donation service with about 1,300 employees needed its works council’s agreement for how it set up the comment function on its Facebook page, because visitors could post comments there about identifiable staff. In 2022, the same court treated the introduction of Microsoft 365 as subject to this right. Because the software needs one rule for the whole company, it ruled that the company-wide works council is responsible. Without an agreement, a conciliation board decides.
The Plan on Display
Before a German town designates land for new housing or a business park, it must tell the public möglichst frühzeitig, as early as possible, about the aims of the plan, the alternatives that differ substantially, and the likely effects. Residents must have the chance to comment and discuss. The draft plan is then published for one month, and anyone may submit comments. The law ends the procedure with a duty: Die fristgemäß abgegebenen Stellungnahmen sind zu prüfen; das Ergebnis ist mitzuteilen. (The comments submitted on time must be examined, and the result must be communicated.)
The School Conference
In North Rhine-Westphalia, every school has a Schulkonferenz, a school conference. The law calls it the school’s highest body for participation. Within the law, it decides on the school’s program, on which textbooks are introduced, on the school rules, and on whether lessons are spread over six days of the week. In lower secondary schools, teachers, parents and students hold seats in equal numbers. The principal chairs the meeting but has no vote, except to break a tie.