Status: 08/31/2022 1:43 p.m
Federal Minister of Labor Heil now wants to forego a return to the home office offer obligation. The cabinet passed a new occupational health and safety regulation. Companies should therefore create hygiene concepts to protect against infections.
Companies should not be obliged to offer their employees home office and corona tests again from autumn. According to the Ministry of Labour, the Federal Cabinet in Meseberg, Brandenburg, passed a new Corona Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance.
According to this, employers should only “check” a home office offer for employees and a regular offer of corona tests as part of a hygiene concept. The new regulation is to apply from October 1 to April 7, 2023.
In an earlier draft of the ordinance from the home of Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD), it was still said: “The employer must offer employees the opportunity to carry out suitable activities in their home if there are no compelling operational reasons to the contrary.” In addition, there was an obligation to offer two tests per week for all those who work in person.
Create hygiene concepts
Obligations for companies to offer tests and home office expired in March. At that time, responsibility for corona measures was largely placed in the hands of employers. At the end of May, when the Corona Occupational Health and Safety Ordinance expired, the remaining requirements for companies also expired.
Now the regulation is to be reactivated and hygiene concepts are to be drawn up. Reason: For autumn and winter it is to be expected that the number of infections will increase significantly again. Therefore, protective measures would have to be taken again in working life. “In addition to measures to implement the AHA+L rule and wearing protective masks, this can also include reducing operational personal contact, for example by reducing the simultaneous use of rooms and by offering employees the opportunity to work from home,” it says in the draft.
criticism from employers
The BDA umbrella organization of employers had sharply criticized a return to the obligation to offer. The FDP welcomed the weakening. “The obligation to offer home offices, the obligation to wear masks and the obligation to offer tests – we could not have explained all of this to employees and companies,” said the labor policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Pascal Kober, to the Reuters news agency.