Judgment in Case C-311/21 TimePartner Personalmanagement

Thursday 15th December 2022

Judgment in Case C-311/21 TimePartner Personalmanagement

(Social Policy)

Between January and April 2017, TimePartner Personalmanagement GmbH, a temporary work agency, employed CM as a temporary worker on the basis of a fixed- term contract. During her mission, CM was placed as an order picker with a user company in the retail sector.

For this work, she received a gross hourly wage of € 9.23, in accordance with the collective agreement applicable to temporary workers, concluded between two unions to which TimePartner Personalmanagement GmbH and CM were affiliated respectively.

This collective agreement derogated from the principle of equal treatment recognized in German law, by providing for temporary workers lower remuneration than that granted to workers of the user company under the terms of a collective agreement for workers in the retail sector in the Land of Bavaria (Germany), namely a gross hourly wage of € 13.64.

CM lodged an appeal with the Arbeitsgericht Würzburg (Labour Court of Würzburg, Germany) seeking to obtain additional remuneration of € 1,296.72, equivalent to the difference in salary between temporary workers and comparable workers recruited directly by the user company. It invoked, in that regard, a breach of the principle of equal treatment of temporary workers enshrined in Article 5 of Directive 2008/104.

After the dismissal of this action at first instance and on appeal, CM brought an action for Revision before the Bundesarbeitsgericht (Federal Labor Court, Germany), which referred five questions to the Court for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of this provision.

Background Documents C-311/21