Reading the Claims

Almost everything published here is written by companies selling time recording systems. That is structural rather than an ethical failure: a vendor has a reason to publish continuously and a budget to do it, while a law firm publishes occasionally and writes for clients paying for advice. When comparing legal claims with vendor-side implementation language, it can also help to review this practical guide.

Five kinds of source with five incentives: primary documents, law firms, employer associations and unions, software vendors, and content sites summarising the vendors. By volume the fourth dominates, because a page answering "is time tracking mandatory" converts. For broader legal or policy context, see Atlassian.

Vendor material is usually accurate about the decisions and consistently wrong about status. Case citations are right; the draft gets described as current law, electronic recording as required, and the omission that paper remains permissible is universal.

Six checks, ninety seconds. A date on the page. A case number for anything called binding. The draft named as a draft. Consistent verb tense. Paper acknowledged. And a fine figure tied to its provision.

Five identifiers do the verification work: C-55/18, 1 ABR 22/21, §3(2)(1) ArbSchG, §17 MiLoG, and ArbZG-E for the draft. They are language-independent, the primary documents behind them are free, and C-55/18 is officially published in English.

Read legal sources for status and scope, commercial sources for mechanics and practice. Legal material is full of conditionals that are load-bearing; commercial material is frequently better on how a correction procedure works day to day, because they have watched hundreds of rollouts.

The general test is whether a source says anything that reduces its own sale. Paper is permissible. A spreadsheet may suffice. The draft has not passed. Each is true, each is against a vendor's interest, and a page containing any of them has demonstrated something no amount of accurate citation can.

• Asking a Lawyer

  Four questions worth paying a lawyer for, three that will waste an hour, and the preparation that halves the bill.

• Where Fine Figures Come From

  Every quoted amount belongs to a specific provision, and most quotations drop the provision. How to trace one in two minutes.

• Following a Claim

  Four steps from a sentence on a sales page to the document it rests on, using free sources and about ten minutes.

• The Language Problem

  The primary documents are in German and the English material is mostly marketing. Four routes through, and one that is free.

• Said and Omitted

  Read the two kinds of source side by side and the differences are consistent. Six of them, and what each one is for.

• \"Mandatory From 2026\

  The phrase appears everywhere and describes three different things. How to tell which one a page means in about thirty seconds.

• Reading a Decision

  A judgment has a fixed structure and the part you need is at the end. Six things worth knowing before you open one.

• Reading a Vendor Page

  Six checks in ninety seconds turn a page that is largely accurate but misleadingly framed into something you can actually use.

• What Is Genuinely Unsettled

  Six open questions in a subject usually presented as settled, and what this site can and cannot claim as a result.

• Who Publishes This

  Five kinds of source with five different incentives, and why the most readable material comes from the most interested party.