Under the DGB-BZA agreement, the requirement for benefits for holiday and Christmas benefits is reduced to six months from 1 January 2006. This reduction in this service requirement is of particular importance, given that, according to interim labour statistics (June 2002), approximately two-thirds of temporary workers work for less than three months. The two DGB collective agreements provide for a 35-hour week, resulting in a normal working time of 151.67 hours per month. The actual working time of the staff is regulated according to the actual weekly duration of work in the user company. The discrepancies between the standard working time and the hours actually worked are saved in the form of time credits in an individual working time account (work time count). While the DGB-BZA agreement saves up to 230 hours, the limit in the DGB-iGZ contract is 150 hours. Workers have the right to take a break for such hours. The DGB-BZA agreement also pays for a number of cash savings. The collective agreements between the DGB and BZA provide, in addition to the aforementioned wage rates, a bonus that depends on the working time in the company of users: the two formulas of collective agreements contain „hardness clauses“ – that is, employers can apply for temporary exemptions from conventional provisions in case of economic difficulties with threat of bankruptcy , to avoid insolvency. The DGB-BZA collective agreement also contains an „opening clause“ that allows „tripartite“ wage agreements – that is, between unions, temporary employment agencies and user companies – when they are more favourable to temporary workers sent to these companies. As long as the legal status of certain CGB member associations and their legal right to enter into collective agreements are challenged in the courts, it is unlikely that the collective agreements they conclude will be widely accepted in the agency labour sector.
So far, the main employers` organisations have opted for negotiations with the DGB, but it remains to be seen which of the various collective agreement packages will benefit from the broadest tariff coverage. A nine-scale scoring system is in place, ranging from simple repetitive work that does not require much training (scale 1) to work requiring a university degree and multi-year work experience (scale 9). Scale 4 includes qualified work requiring three years of formal training. The exact definitions differ in detail between the BZ and IGZ agreements. Staff members are grouped in different grades according to the main requirements of the work they must perform in the user company. When they perform work requiring a higher qualification for a given period, they receive a bonus for that period corresponding to the difference between the worker`s standard salary and the higher pay scale in question. In accordance with the collective agreement with BZA, this bonus must only be paid if the work requiring a higher qualification lasts more than six weeks. The DGB-BZA wage contract explicitly states that minimum wages for seconded workers (DE0306207T), which are higher than agreed rates for temporary workers, are not covered by the collective agreement.