Voluntary salary waiver possible at any time
The Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) Darmstadt writes on its website: “A voluntary salary waiver by one or more employees is possible at any time due to the contractual freedom.” This means that theoretically every employee, whether managerial or temporary, can offer to waive their salary at any time – i.e. to forego part of their salary for a certain period of time.
However, there are restrictions: The reduced wage must not be below the minimum wage. This means that people employed at the minimum wage are not allowed to cut their wages. You can’t just forego the entire salary either – the employer must continue to pay social security contributions for the employee, after all. The usual procedure is to agree with the employer on a waiver of holiday pay or the 13th salary, according to Peter Meyer, a specialist lawyer for labor law, to the Handelsblatt.
Attention: A salary waiver is not a wage deferral – there are no additional payments to the employee, because he finally waives the agreed amount.
Union and employers’ association must agree
However, there are exceptions to the rule when it comes to a salary waiver or a temporary wage reduction being decided between the employer and the employee without further ado: For example, if a company has a works council, this has a say in the negotiations about the wage reduction.
If it is an employment relationship with a collective wage agreement, not only the employee and employer, but both parties to the collective agreement (i.e. the union on the part of the employee and the employers’ association on the part of the employer) must agree in a so-called opening clause.
Special rules apply to temporary workers and part-time employees
Usually, a so-called waiver agreement must be concluded, which then also validates the wage reduction for social security. This does not apply to temporary workers hired for a maximum of one month.
On the other hand, the provisions for the waiver of salary for part-time employees and employees with fixed-term employment contracts are much stricter: For them, a waiver of salary is only possible if this does not conflict with the Part-Time and Fixed-Term Employment Act (TzBfG), i.e. does not discriminate against other workers in the company. This is particularly important when it is the employer and not the employee who brings up the salary cut.
Particularly committed employees may also want to give up part of their wages retrospectively – but this is prohibited and therefore not legal: The wage waiver does not apply to wages that have already been paid, but only from the time the contract is concluded.
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