Pay Transparency Act (Entgelttransparenzgesetz)
1. A claim for equal pay can be based on the fact that a single comparable person of the opposite sex, performing the same or equivalent work, receives higher pay (comparison between pairs). This applies regardless of the size of the group of comparable persons of the opposite sex. (Paragraph 23)
(Federal Labor Court, Judgment of October 23, 2025 – 8 AZR 300/24 –, juris)
Recently, ZDF (German public television) asked me for an interview on the Pay Transparency Act. Unfortunately, I had to decline due to vacation. However, I would like to draw your attention to a very current case of mine that concerns precisely this issue and will be heard on June 3, 2026, at 9:30 a.m. (Courtroom B 108) at the Hessian State Labor Court.
It concerns a lawsuit filed by one of my clients against Deutsche Lufthansa AG. I have already reported on this case in this blog. The background to this case is that my client and her husband (both represented by me) were long-term employees of Lufthansa. They both held comparable positions and, prior to my client’s part-time employment, also comparable salaries.
The husband was offered a termination agreement that included extended leave and a substantial severance package. However, the wife did not receive such an offer, despite her repeated requests.
Lufthansa argued that the unequal treatment was due to the husband’s lawsuit, and that the termination agreement was offered to him as part of the legal proceedings and their conclusion. The wife, however, did not file a lawsuit. Therefore, they claimed, the circumstances were different.
In the first instance, Lufthansa was ordered to pay vacation pay, which they had also failed to pay the wife.
In my view, the aforementioned argument cannot justify this unequal treatment. As explained in the Federal Labor Court ruling cited above, unequal treatment also exists if the pay disadvantage is only compared to a single person of the opposite sex performing a comparable job (so-called paired comparison). This was the case here. The severance payment made to the husband was the sum of his salary up to the agreed termination date (accelerated termination clause). Therefore, there is pay inequality, because the wife did not receive this salary.
If one were to truly differentiate between employees and pay some severance because they sued the employer and others not because they waived their right to sue, this would be a direct invitation to employees to always sue their employer in the future if they want severance pay, because otherwise, they would receive nothing.
The Hessian State Labor Court will, as expected, examine the issue and the case very thoroughly and discuss it in detail.
I look forward to the hearing.