working time
noun · Arbeitszeit
German working time is capped by public law, not by agreement: eight hours on a working day, extendable to ten only if the average over six calendar months or twenty-four weeks stays at eight, § 3 ArbZG, with an uninterrupted rest of eleven hours afterwards. Because Saturday counts as a working day the weekly ceiling is forty-eight hours, and no opt-out exists.
Which translation, when
Why
Working time is die Arbeitszeit, and the German regime differs from the English one in kind rather than in degree, because the limits are public law and not contractual. Section 3 ArbZG provides that the working time of employees must not exceed eight hours on a working day, and that it may be extended to ten hours only where the average of eight hours a working day is not exceeded within six calendar months or twenty-four weeks. Two things follow that English readers regularly miss. The reference unit is the Werktag, which includes Saturday, so the statutory week runs to forty-eight hours, and the flexibility lies in the averaging period rather than in the daily figure: a sixty-hour week is lawful only if a correspondingly shorter one follows within the reference period. Around the cap sit the rest rules, and in practice they bite harder. After the end of the daily working time an employee must have an uninterrupted rest of at least eleven hours, § 5 ArbZG, which is the provision late-evening work followed by an early start actually breaches; breaks of thirty minutes are prescribed above six hours of work and forty-five minutes above nine, and nobody may work more than six hours at a stretch without one. Two further points belong in a current translation. Employers must record working time, a duty the German courts derived from occupational safety law after the Court of Justice held that member states must require objective and reliable measurement. And there is no individual opt-out of the British kind: derogations run through collective agreements and works agreements within the limits the Act sets, never through a clause the employee signs alone.
Typical mistakes
- The eight-hour cap is measured on the Werktag including Saturday, so reading it as a forty-hour week misstates the statutory ceiling.
- Extension to ten hours is lawful only against averaging within six months or twenty-four weeks, so a permanent ten-hour day breaches § 3 ArbZG.
- There is no individual opt-out from the German limits, so a clause by which the employee agrees to longer hours does not make them lawful.
What matters
Checking a German working-time model for a foreign group: the review should test the daily cap and the averaging period, confirm the eleven-hour rest between shifts, and remember that derogations need a collective instrument rather than the employee’s signature.
What the machine misses
Machine renderings of working time produce Arbeitsstunden or Arbeitszeiten, which describe hours worked rather than the regulated concept, and the German Arbeitszeit is capped by § 3 ArbZG at eight hours on a working day with averaging up to ten and an eleven-hour rest afterwards; the loose word also suggests that the parties may agree otherwise, which German law does not permit.
Examples
| working time | die Arbeitszeit |
| eight hours on a working day | acht Stunden werktäglich |
| an uninterrupted rest period | eine ununterbrochene Ruhezeit |
| the averaging period | der Ausgleichszeitraum |