Wellness massages on Sundays and holidays: Company wins in court against authority - Berlin court allows Sunday work for massage therapists in landmark ruling
A Berlin court has ruled that massage therapists can now be required to work on Sundays and public holidays. The decision came after a dispute between a local business and the city's occupational safety regulator. It marks a change in how the Working Time Act applies to certain wellness services.
The case centred on a company's emergency motion to allow staff to perform wellness massages outside standard working hours. The Berlin State Office for Occupational Safety had initially opposed the practice under the Working Time Act. The court, however, classified non-medical massage studios as 'recreational facilities', placing them under an exemption.
According to the ruling, massages primarily serve to 'enhance well-being', fitting the law's intent for leisure-related exceptions. This interpretation permits businesses to schedule employees for Sunday and holiday shifts. The decision does not address broader regional differences in how the act is enforced across Germany. No further details were provided on how the ruling might affect similar cases in other states. The court's focus remained on the specific dispute and the nature of wellness services offered by the business in question.
The ruling allows the company to immediately require employees to work on Sundays and public holidays. It sets a precedent for how non-medical massage studios are treated under labour laws in Berlin. Future cases may now reference this decision when interpreting exemptions for wellness businesses.
Read also:
- American teenagers taking up farming roles previously filled by immigrants, a concept revisited from 1965's labor market shift.
- Weekly affairs in the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag)
- Landslide claims seven lives, injures six individuals while they work to restore a water channel in the northern region of Pakistan
- Escalating conflict in Sudan has prompted the United Nations to announce a critical gender crisis, highlighting the disproportionate impact of the ongoing violence on women and girls.
