EU Ruling Mandates Travel Time as Paid Work for Germany's Mobile Workforce
Published on 07/01/2026 at 05:47 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Mobile workers in Germany — including field service technicians, construction crews and home-care staff — just got a significant boost in working-time rights. The European Court of Justice ruled on October 19, 2025, that journeys from a company's base to the first client site, and back again, count as regular working hours when the employer organizes the route.
The distinction matters: ordinary commuting between home and a fixed office remains private time. But for employees who start and end their day at a depot, workshop or assembly point, the travel to and from client locations must now be logged as paid work.
That ruling lands against a backdrop of tight German overtime rules that many employers underestimate. Under current law, companies cannot simply demand extra hours. Overtime is only permissible when a contractual basis exists — in the employment contract, a collective bargaining agreement or a works agreement. Without that foundation, extra work is limited to genuine emergencies, such as massive staff shortages or preventing serious damage.
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Even with a contractual right to overtime, management cannot bypass the works council. Any temporary extension of working hours triggers a mandatory co-determination right for the employee representative body.
The Working Hours Act sets hard boundaries: no more than ten hours per day, followed by at least eleven consecutive hours of rest. If those protections are violated, employees are entitled to refuse the additional work.
Compensation for overtime is not automatic. A pay obligation only arises when the boss has explicitly ordered, approved or tolerated the extra hours. Many employment contracts contain blanket overtime clauses that promise no extra pay — but such clauses are usually invalid unless they specify a concrete upper limit, for example, ten percent of the contractual working time.
There is a major exception for high earners. According to court rulings, employees whose gross monthly salary exceeds the contribution assessment ceiling for statutory pension insurance — currently around €8,450 — generally have no claim to overtime pay.
Timing is critical. Most German employment contracts include a three-month exclusion period for making claims. Employees who fail to assert their overtime rights in writing within that window lose them entirely.
The legal framework for recording working hours has been evolving. Following the European Court of Justice rulings in 2019 and the German Federal Labor Court ruling in 2022, employers must document start time, end time and break duration. That obligation applies to home office and so-called trust-based working time arrangements as well.
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In the political arena, there is debate about introducing tax-free overtime bonuses of up to 25 percent of the base hourly rate. But the relief would be modest: estimates suggest a nurse would save roughly €24 per year, a software developer about €102. Since nearly 29 percent of the workforce is part-time, many would gain little.
The perennial problem of time-recording fraud remains. Around 13 percent of employees regularly report their hours incorrectly. A new law specifying the precise requirements for time tracking is expected by mid-2026. Until then, the existing court rulings remain the binding standard.
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