A spiritual association for the spread of yoga is not a religious community. He can therefore not invoke the constitutionally guaranteed right of self-determination of religious and ideological communities, as the Federal Labor Court (BAG) in Erfurt ruled on Tuesday. According to this, a former member of the Yoga Vidya community is entitled to the minimum wage for their work in an ashram of the association.
In 2012, the plaintiff joined one of the seminar houses, also known as ashrams, of the defendant Yoga Vidya association as a so-called Sevka member. The aim of the association is to spread yoga, for example through courses, seminars and other events. According to the association, Sevka members perform a spiritual service there – “in the knowledge that they are doing something meaningful”. They are bound by the instructions of their superiors. As a qualified lawyer, the plaintiff performed various organizational tasks in her ashram and most recently headed the social media and marketing team. She had statutory social insurance and received pocket money of initially 360 and then 430 euros a month.
In 2020 she left the community. She demanded regular remuneration from the sponsoring association, most recently according to the statutory minimum wage, a total of a good 46,000 euros. There was an employment relationship, the association was pursuing economic goals with the marketing of yoga. Her spiritual development was only possible outside of her contractual regular working hours of 42 hours per week. The defendant association, on the other hand, said that life in an ashram of the association was comparable to that in a Christian monastery. The plaintiff performed her work as a member of such a monastic community.
The BAG awarded the plaintiff the minimum wage. Only the number of hours worked and thus the total amount of money to be paid in arrears is to be clarified by the Hamm Regional Labor Court. Board and lodging are not counted towards the minimum wage. The reason given by the Erfurt judges was that the plaintiff was contractually obliged to her so-called seva services. It was an instruction-bound and externally determined work. The woman was therefore an employee and entitled to the statutory minimum wage. The association’s autonomy does not allow the Yoga Vidya community to circumvent the minimum wage and other legal protections.
Yoga Vidya is not a religious or ideological community. The association can therefore not invoke the right to self-determination guaranteed in the Basic Law. According to the statutes, the association refers to wisdom teachings, philosophies and practices from India and other cultures as well as to spiritual practices from Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Taoism and other world religions. “Due to this broad spectrum, a systemic overall structure of religious or ideological elements and their inner connection with the Yoga Vidya teaching is not sufficiently recognizable,” the BAG found.
