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Germany`s Federal Constitutional Court has overturned a 100-year-old law banning women manual laborers from working the night shift, defined as 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., saying it violates a constitutional clause against sexual discrimination. The law did not apply to non-manual workers, such as doctors or nurses. The ruling follows an appeal by a woman bakery owner in Paderborn, 100 miles northeast of Bonn, who was fined for hiring women to pack pie crusts at night. In ruling the ban illegal, the high court urged legislators to pass a law against abuse of night workers, male and female, calling the hours ”in principle detrimental to human beings.”
