Nursing and domestic help that are sent to Germany to look after the elderly there must not be paid less. The Federal Labor Court decided in a landmark judgment.
Foreign nursing and domestic helpers who are placed in Germany to look after the elderly in their homes are entitled to a minimum wage. The Federal Labor Court decided on Thursday in a landmark judgment in Erfurt. According to the highest German labor judges (5 AZR 505/20), the minimum wage also applies to standby times during which the women, mostly from Eastern Europe, provided on-demand care. “Even on-call time is to be paid with the full minimum wage,” said the presiding judge Rüdiger Linck in the hearing.
Nursing specialists and trade unions assume that there are several hundred thousand foreign caregivers for people in need of care in German households. Their working conditions are often precarious. A woman from Bulgaria set the precedent at the Federal Labor Court, who claims to have looked after a more than 90-year-old senior citizen in her Berlin apartment 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Her contract stipulated working hours of 30 hours a week.
The federal judges decided the amount of the additional payment that the plaintiff must receive from her Bulgarian company is to be re-examined by the Berlin-Brandenburg regional labor court. They referred the case of the woman, who had been employed as a “social assistant” in Bulgaria and placed in Germany in 2015, back to the regional labor court.