Soccer fans are familiar with the nerve-wracking situation in which players and spectators have to wait for the video assistant referee (VAR) to review a decision during a soccer match, and a referee sometimes reverses his previous decision after a long wait. The referees in the third division may have experienced the same thing last year when the question of whether they are “employees” under German law was brought before the labor courts. The Bonn Labor Court initially answered this question with a “no” in February 2025 (Ref: 4 Ca 2061/24), but the Cologne Regional Labor Court (Ref: 5 Ta 58/25) took a different view in June 2025 and answered “yes.” In December 2025, the Federal Labor Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht (BAG)) issued its decision in an appeal proceeding.
