Unambiguous assignment of hybrid companies not possible
Berger & Tolls is a wholesale company for fruits and vegetables on the wholesale market of Düsseldorf. The company is specialized on the delivery of their products to their costumers out of the gastronomy sector. Thereby the ten man and vehicle strong steering armada is daily in action. One of the managing directors of the company is Roland Tolls. He explains: “Berger & Tolls is a hybrid company, just as other wholesale companies as well. It is not clear to which branch of the profession we belong. On one side we are a normal wholesaler and we sell our fruits and vegetables here on the wholesale. We also have our employees who are working here in our warehouse. On the other side, we also serve our customers with our own lorry with the products they have ordered.” According to the law, the company could fall under the law of the documentation requirements. Companies in the freight forwarding, transportation and logistics sector, the construction industry, restaurants and hostels, forestry companies, commercial cleaning, exhibition stand construction and the meat industry are affected by the documentation requirements.
Managing director Roland Tolls of Berger & Tolls GmbH & Co. KG
The law is not explicit
“The most trouble is caused, because the law is not explicated enough”, Roland Tolls complains, “Also a specialist in labour law did not want to give us a written guarantee if we fall under the documentation requirements or not. Also, the people at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs cannot tell us exactly where we belong. Because of this it is impossible to implement the law exactly.” Due to the many areas of activity, it is difficult to tell to which branch his company belongs at the end, Tolls describes.
Bureaucracy causes quite a headache
The increased bureaucracy is causing quite a headache to the company. “Because of the documentation requirements the employer has to certificate every day to each driver if he drove yesterday or if he had free”, is Tolls describing the difficult circumstances. “For example: When the driver had two days off on Saturday and Sunday, the employer have to declare this, because this time also count as resting period. If the driver was in our warehouse, because the tour had to be skipped out of any reason, the employer has to declare that the driver was in the warehouse and not on tour.” In addition, the recommendation of the legislature is that if an examination of the working hours takes place, the employee should lead the documents with him. “You can almost hire someone who is dealing with the tracking of work hours for each employee," the wholesalers criticizes.
Law overlaps are causing confusion
Another problem of the law of the minimum wage is that it coincides with the professional driver law of Germany. The law of resting time of both laws is overlapping for a driver who is driving a commercially lorry. “According to the law, the driving time is working time. The law says, that within six working hours it is important, that a break of about 45 minutes is maintained”, Roland Tolls explains, “During the night our drivers are having first a 15 minutes break and later also a 30 minutes break. Just as the law requires. But according to the professional driver law it is not allowed that the driving time of a vehicle is longer than four hours in a row. After four hours the driver have to take a break of about 45 minutes.” The resting time of a driver have to be precisely synchronized so that both rhythms are covered.
Additional work for medium-sized enterprises is disproportionate
Despite of the bureaucratic additional effort of the wholesalers he pleads for a minimum wage: "Basically I think a minimum wage of 8,50 Euro per hour is absolutely good and right. But right now with the current implementation associated with the administrative burden, it is absolutely not proportionate for a small medium-sized company like us."
Roland Tolls
Berger & Tolls GmbH & Co. KG
Eickener Straße 40, 41366 Schwalmtal
Tel: +49 (0)21 63 57 69 28-0
bergerundtolls-fruechte@t-online.de
www.bergerundtolls-fruechte.de