The care providers of the Catholic and Protestant church in Germany have become
the country’s largest employers. Since the 1990s, Caritas and Diakonie, the two largest faithbased
care providers are facing a double-pressure. On the one side, Europeanization and
liberalization of the care sector pressure them to be economically professionalized; on the
other side, their exceptional status as church-based employers has increasingly become the
target of critique in a pluralizing German society. In this paper we analyze lawsuits between
employers and employees of faith-based welfare organizations in German courts. Our data
shows that conflicts between church-based employers and their employees are increasing.
However, Caritas and Diakonie still manage to protect their legal prerogatives – by discriminating
their employees. The study sheds not only new light on the role of Churches in pluralizing society but presnets also a new methodology on
how to study the conflictualities that arise through the analysis of legal labor law disputes.
