© 2001 by Industrial Law Society
The Right to Part-Time Work under German Law: Progress in or a Boomerang for Equal Employment Opportunities?
1 J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main
As a contribution to job creation and equal employment opportunities for men and women a general ‘right to part-time work’, modelled upon the right to adapt working time under Dutch law, has been introduced in Germany on the occasion of the implementation of Directive 97/80/EC on part-time. This article explains the details of the right to part-time work and questions its positive impact on employment opportunities for women. The article begins by illuminating the legal and political background of the introduction of the right to part-time work. It then examines its preconditions as applicability, procedural and substantive requirements, and the employer's options to react. As to the limits on the right to part-time work, one of the most discussed problems is its relation to the entrepreneurial freedom to organise the enterprise. The article shows that the right to part-time work has to be interpreted as restricting this freedom. It then addresses two other statutory provisions, passed only a few weeks earlier, granting a right to part-time work for specific groups of employees (disabled persons and parents of children under three). The following section deals with a right which is at least as important as the right to part-time work but has not gained similar attention: the right to extend individual working time, as guaranteed in the same Act. In the penultimate section the competences of the works council as regards the right to part-time work are examined. The article concludes with a few sceptical remarks with regard to the expected positive impact on equal employment opportunities for men and women.