The year-long dispute between the investigative journalist Birte Meier and the ZDF about equal pay for women and men is going to the Federal Constitutional Court.
Your constitutional complaint was sent to ZDF, the Federal Ministry of Labor and the Federal Labor Court at the end of March, said the Society for Freedom Rights (GFF), which is accompanying the process.
Meanwhile, the ZDF gave information about salaries and fees. According to the GFF, men in a comparable position at ZDF received an average of around 800 euros per month more than Meier in 2017. In addition, there were performance bonuses of up to around 1450 euros per year for men, which the applicant's HR manager had not disclosed in the first letter of information. Because of their unequal classification in the collective bargaining tier system, men also rose faster. "Therefore, in the median of 2018, they are likely to have earned 1200 euros more and in 2019 over 1500 euros more per month," calculated the GFF. The information from ZDF confirmed the suspicion of discrimination.
The multi-award-winning journalist Birte Meier asked for information about payment in the broadcaster after the Entgelttransparenzgesetz 2017 came into force and sued the Federal Labor Court in Erfurt for this claim. Almost a year ago, it found that with a view to the European Equal Opportunities Directive of 2006, employee-like employees such as permanent freelancers were also entitled to a right of information.
The Society for Freedom Rights emphasized that, despite the judgment, Meier had not yet come to her right to equal pay. The Federal Constitutional Court could now set a precedent judgment in the matter of "equal pay". At the time of her request for information, Meier had been working as a permanent freelancer for the ZDF magazine “Frontal 21”. In the course of the legal dispute, ZDF transferred her from the Berlin editorial team to the Mainz department of Info, Society and Life.