German law on agency staff upheld

Germany’s highest court has ruled that legislation prohibiting the use of agency staff as strike-breakers is constitutional, as it is essential that unions are able to “exert adequate pressure on the employers’ side in an industrial dispute”.

New legislation on agency workers was introduced in Germany in 2017, and it included a clause prohibiting the use of agency workers to replace workers on strike. Previously there was only an individual right for agency workers to refuse the work.

A German cinema chain challenged this legislation, claiming that the 2017 law infringed its right to employ agency workers as a defence against a strike.

In a judgement published last month, Germany’s constitutional court threw out this argument. It pointed out that using agency workers to replace strikers reduced the effectiveness of strike action and weakened the power of the unions.

It also noted that agency workers had been increasingly used as strike-breakers before 2017 and that this trend had been halted by the new legislation.

As a balance of power between unions and employers was essential to effective collective bargaining, itself a constitutional right, the court found that the 2017 legislation was in line with the constitution.

German unions, which testified in court on the importance of the issue, have welcomed the judgement. Anja Piel, a board member in the DGB union confederation, said that, “any other decision would have hollowed out unions’ right to strike and damaged workers’ interests”.