Claim to an employer for unpaid wages and overtime (Germany)
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This document is in German
The PDF you download is in German — that is the language it has to be filed in, so it is not translated. Everything on this page is here to tell you what it says.
A letter claiming unpaid wages, salary or overtime pay from an employer in Germany, sent in time to beat the exclusion period (Ausschlussfrist) in the employment contract or collective agreement, which is often only three months from the due date. It lists month, type of claim and gross amount, sets a payment deadline, claims default interest under § 288(1) of the German Civil Code (BGB), backs overtime with the employee's own records and can announce that work will be withheld. In German, to print, sign by hand and deliver with proof of receipt, and to e-mail as well.
What you fill in
The details the document asks for.
- Employee
- Employee's address
- Employer
- Employer's postal address (street and number, postcode and town on separate lines)
- City
- Date
- Employee's personnel number
- Date of hiring
- Claims by month (month, type of pay, gross amount)
- Amount due
- Applicable collective agreement (or “none”)
- Unpaid overtime (dates and hours)
- Who ordered or approved the overtime, and how
- Payment deadline
- Withholding work (only reserve the right, or announce it)
Preview
This document is produced for you. Your answers are typed into it and the finished PDF is yours to keep.
Common questions
- How soon must unpaid wages be claimed from an employer in Germany?
- Often long before the three-year limitation period (§§ 195 and 199 of the German Civil Code) runs out: many employment contracts and collective agreements contain exclusion periods under which a claim is lost unless it is raised, usually within three months of the due date, and a second stage then often requires a court claim. Check your contract and any collective agreement. Such a period cannot extinguish the minimum wage (§ 3 MiLoG), and a contract clause that does not exempt it is void as a whole in contracts made after 31 December 2014.
- Is an e-mail enough to claim wages in time in Germany?
- In standard employment contracts made after 30 September 2016, an exclusion period may require no stricter form than text form (§ 309 no. 13 of the German Civil Code), so an e-mail is enough there. A collective agreement may still demand a signed letter. The safe course is to print the letter, sign it by hand, hand over the original against a receipt or have a messenger who knows its content put it in the letterbox, and also send a copy by e-mail. What counts is receipt (§ 130 BGB); the tracking status of a registered letter dropped in the letterbox does not prove it (Federal Labour Court, 30 January 2025, 2 AZR 68/24).
- What must an employee in Germany show to be paid for overtime?
- Even though employers must record working time (Federal Labour Court, 1 ABR 22/21), in a dispute the employee has to set out on which days they worked how many hours beyond the agreed working time, and that the employer ordered, approved or tolerated the overtime or that it was needed to get the work done (Federal Labour Court, 4 May 2022, 5 AZR 359/21). So attach your own records and say who asked for the extra hours or accepted them.
- Can default interest and the €40 late-payment fee be claimed on late wages in Germany?
- Default interest, yes: where payday is fixed by the calendar, the employer is in default without a reminder (§ 286(2) no. 1 of the German Civil Code) and owes interest at five percentage points above the base rate (§ 288(1) BGB). The €40 flat fee under § 288(5) BGB, no: the Federal Labour Court has ruled it out in employment, because before the labour court each side bears its own lawyer's costs at first instance (8 AZR 26/18, 25 September 2018; § 12a of the Labour Courts Act). So this letter does not claim it.
- Can an employee in Germany stop working while wages are unpaid?
- Sometimes: where the arrears are not insignificant — courts mostly look for more than two months' pay — the employee may withhold work under § 273 of the German Civil Code (BGB), having announced it beforehand. If the arrears are too small, staying away counts as refusing to work and can lead to a formal warning or dismissal. So choose the announcement in this letter only after checking carefully, ideally after taking advice.
How you can sign this document
- Print it and sign by hand. The signature lines in the document are left blank on purpose — sign on them in ink.
- Sign it yourself with a qualified electronic signature. If you already hold a QES — Evrotrust, B-Trust, StampIT, ZealiD or any qualified provider on the EU Trusted List, on a card, a USB token, in a mobile app or in the cloud — our signing guide explains step by step how to sign this exact file without invalidating it. Step-by-step help, and a way to check it worked
DocMuse sells documents, not legal advice. Acceptance always depends on the recipient's rules and your local law.
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