Articles from Nadine Kirsch

In its judgment of 14.08.2018 - 1 AZR 287/17, the Federal Labor Court ruled that an employer on strike is generally entitled to deter its employees from participating in a strike by promising them a bonus. Although the Federal Labor Court assumes that there is unequal treatment of striking and non-striking employees, the promise of a strike-breaking bonus is a permissible means of industrial action and the unequal treatment between striking and non-striking employees is therefore justified.

The Federal Cabinet has passed a draft law on the new right to temporary part-time work (bridging part-time work). For employers with at least 45 employees, employees will in future be able to apply to their employer to reduce their working hours for a period of between one and five years. Employees on permanent part-time contracts will also be able to extend their working hours more easily in future by shifting the burden of proof to the employer.

The EU Parliament passed new regulations against wage dumping on 29.05.2018. From mid-2020, employees who are posted abroad are to receive the same pay as local workers.

Individual remuneration agreements that refer to collectively agreed principles cannot be amended by a works agreement to the detriment of the employee.

The payment of a higher severance payment compared to employees without a works council office does not generally favor works council members, but is based on the special protection against dismissal for works council members.

The plaintiff in the main proceedings was employed by the defendant as a teacher. According to the contractual provisions, his employment relationship was to end when he reached the standard retirement age. Shortly before reaching the standard retirement age, the plaintiff applied to the defendant for continued employment beyond the standard retirement age. The defendant agreed to extend the employment relationship until the end of the current 2014/2015 school year. Before this time limit expired, the plaintiff submitted another application to extend the employment relationship again for a limited period until the end of the first half of the 2015/2016 school year. The defendant rejected this application. The plaintiff then filed a lawsuit and claimed that the fixed-term employment relationship was in breach of EU law.

The plaintiff employee had agreed a three-month non-competition clause in his employment contract with the defendant in the event of termination of the employment relationship, which prohibited him from working for the competition during this period. In return, the plaintiff was to receive compensation in the amount of 50% of his last average monthly salary. This last amounted to EUR 6,747.20 gross. The employment relationship ended at the end of January 31, 2016 due to the plaintiff's own resignation. The plaintiff requested the defendant to pay the waiting allowance for the month of February by email on March 1, 2016, setting a deadline of March 4, 2016. The defendant let this deadline pass, whereupon the plaintiff sent a second - fatal - email to the defendant:

Fixed-term employment contracts with licensed players in the Bundesliga are regularly justified due to the nature of the work performed by the licensed player in accordance with Section 14 (1) sentence 2 no. 4 TzBfG.

With effect from April 1, 2017, extensive new regulations in the area of temporary employment came into force. The aim of the change in the law is to limit temporary work to its core function and to prevent unlawful contractual constructions, in particular bogus work contracts. In the following, we present the main changes to the AÜG that will apply from 01.04.2017. The cited paragraphs already refer to the version of the AÜG from 01.04.2017.

The Hessian Higher Labor Court ruled on 13.03.2017 (16 TaBV 212/16) that the employer may be obliged to provide the works council with a smartphone as a necessary means of information and communication under certain conditions.

In its ruling of 18.01.2017 - 7 AZR 224/15, the Federal Labor Court made a landmark decision on the rest period of a works council member and the unreasonableness of the performance of work.

Due to a change in the law in SGB IX, which applies from 01.01.2017, the dismissal of a severely disabled employee is invalid if the representative body for severely disabled employees was not properly involved. Under previous legislation, the involvement of the representative body for severely disabled employees was required by law in the event of a dismissal. However, failure to do so did not render the dismissal invalid.