Erfurt (dpa/th) – Thuringia’s Labor Minister Heike Werner has appealed to the federal government to better protect employees in precarious employment. “Large shipping and logistics service providers such as Amazon or DHL are still evading their obligation to take responsibility for their subcontractors and external transport service providers,” said the left-wing politician on Tuesday in Erfurt. Occupational health and safety regulations are often massively violated in these areas.
Thuringia is submitting an application to improve working conditions for courier and parcel services at the conference of labor and social affairs ministers, which is taking place in Saarland on Wednesday and Thursday, as Werner’s ministry announced. The application is intended to call on the federal government to increase the joint responsibility of clients for occupational safety in the affected sectors and to expand the requirements for working time documentation.
In addition, Thuringia, together with Berlin and Bremen, is supporting another motion to modernize working time legislation. The three countries are demanding adjustments to the Federal Working Hours Act – and in doing so want to implement a judgment by the Federal Labor Court (BAG) on the recording of working hours. This includes, among other things, the obligation for employers to document the daily working hours of employees with the beginning, end and duration, including the daily rest periods and breaks, the Ministry of Labor announced.
