The clocks are set forward once a year and for some employees this has tangible financial consequences. Not everyone loses money, but anyone who works on an hourly basis or does night shifts should know exactly what the time change means and what rights apply.
Monthly wage or hourly wage
Whether the time change will have a financial impact depends primarily on how the salary is calculated. Anyone who receives a fixed gross monthly salary has nothing to fear: the billing remains unchanged and the lost hour does not have to be reworked or compensated for in any other way. For employees who are paid based on the hours they actually worked, a simple principle applies: seven hours worked means seven hours of wages. On the night of the summer time change, the lost hour is directly reflected in the payroll, as the legal portal meinrecht.de notes.
Shift work
Night shifts bear the brunt of the summer time change – especially nurses, police officers and industrial workers who regularly work through the night. An hour simply falls out of the roster without any compensation being provided. Important: The employer may not postpone this hour to another day and may not require additional work. The labor law portal Haufe makes it clear that such an obligation is not legally permissible, and the DGB Legal Protection adds that hourly earners lose their wage entitlement completely for exactly this one hour.
What is written in the contract is crucial
There is no legal regulation in Germany that uniformly prescribes how the time change should be dealt with in wage matters. Instead, the employment contract, collective agreement and works agreement are decisive. If there is a company agreement on shift work, the employer can plan an additional hour when the winter time change occurs in October. However, if a flat rate payment for overtime is agreed upon in the employment contract, the extra hours may already be considered paid.
Winter time
In the fall the situation is reversed. The clocks are set back, the night is getting longer, and whoever is on duty that night works an hour more than planned. Whether this hour is recognized and paid as overtime is not a question of the law, but of the respective contract. If the additional hour exceeds the collectively agreed weekly working hours, you are entitled to overtime pay or an entry in the working time account. This assessment is based on the ruling of the Federal Labor Court of February 22, 2012 (ref. 5 AZR 765/10), which Haufe uses in its legal assessment.
What the Federal Labor Court has basically regulated
As early as 1985, the Federal Labor Court set a course that still applies today. In companies with continuous shift operations, shifts may be adjusted to the time change so that there are no gaps or overlaps in the roster. The BAG determined this in its judgment of September 11, 1985 (ref. 7 AZR 276/83). At the same time, this ruling draws a clear line: night shifts may not be required to make up the hour lost in the spring. Haufe emphasizes that such an approach by the employer would be expressly inadmissible.
Paul Schütte, editorial team at finanzen.net
