"Grey zones" within dependent employment : formal and informal forms of on-call work in Germany

This article aims to take stock of the various manifestations of on-call work in Germany. It is shown that formal on-call work is, by international standards, relatively strictly regulated in Germany, not least as the result of a 2019 reform of the law. Similar to other countries, however, other informal variants are used that lie outside the scope of the re-regulation or ‘normalisation’ of formal on-call work. Differentiated analyses based on survey data show that both formal and informal variants of on-call work are associated with disproportionately high levels of short part-time work, low pay and consequently with considerable risks of poverty. As a consequence, the ongoing debate on the erosion of the status of employee should not be too narrowly restricted to self-employed workers in the gig economy (Deliveroo, Uber) but should be extended to include the ‘grey zones’ in the area of dependent employment.