BAG: Salary transparency limited to workplace and last year

The Federal Labor Court ruled that, under the Pay Transparency Act, employees may only request information regarding the previous calendar year, not multiple years. Furthermore, this right applies only to their own workplace. A case from Cologne illustrates the practical limitations of the law.

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You Can Only Find Out Last Year’s Salary Data – Not Multiple Years

A woman wanted to know what her male colleagues were earning – and asked for data covering several years at once. Germany’s Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht, BAG) ruled on February 19, 2026 (case ref. 8 AZR 83/25, lower court: LAG Köln, ref. 5 Sa 479/23) that the right to salary information under Germany’s Pay Transparency Act (Entgelttransparenzgesetz) covers only one specific calendar year: the one that was already complete when you made your request.

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Same Job, Six Male Colleagues, Much Higher Pay

A woman had been working since 2013 at a large software company in Cologne, advising business customers on modern workplace software – the same role as at least six male colleagues at the same office. Those colleagues were classified at significantly higher job levels and paid accordingly. In June 2019 she formally requested salary information about her male colleagues for the years 2017 through 2020. Her employer refused.

Why did the court rule this way?

A quick note on how this works in Germany, since it may be unfamiliar: the Entgelttransparenzgesetz (Pay Transparency Act) gives employees the legal right to ask their employer what colleagues of the opposite sex earn for comparable work. This is meant to help uncover gender pay gaps. There is no equivalent federal law like this in the US or UK.

However, the BAG made clear that this right has firm limits. The law refers to the „preceding calendar year” – and the court interpreted that as meaning exactly one completed January-to-December year before your request was made. You cannot bundle several years into one request.

The reasoning is straightforward: the law deliberately balances the employee’s right to information against the effort required from the employer (or works council – Germany’s Betriebsrat, a mandatory employee representative body in larger companies) to compile the data. Limiting it to one year keeps that effort manageable while still giving you a reasonably current picture. A full calendar year is also cleaner for comparison purposes, since it captures annual bonuses and other variable pay components in full.

There is a second important limit the court confirmed: your right only covers your own workplace (Betrieb) as defined under German labour law – not the entire company. If your employer has offices in Munich, Hamburg, and Cologne, you only get data about colleagues at your own location. What people earn elsewhere is not covered.