Sixt and works council? This has not happened before, but could change soon. The regional labor court in Düsseldorf on Tuesday received several notices of dismissal against three Sixt employees. The rental car group announced this last year after the women who worked at the Sixt branch at Düsseldorf Airport wanted to set up a works council. Sixt rejects a connection, but even the court let it be known “that it is not about breaches of contract,” says Verdi union secretary Özay Tarim. “It was always about ways to prevent works council elections,” he says.
The Düsseldorf labor court had already deemed the dismissals “ineffective” in February, also because the employees, as the initiators of a works council election, enjoy so-called “special protection against dismissal”. Sixt then appealed and has now suffered another defeat at the regional labor court. Revision is not possible. This means that the employees can keep their jobs and can now set up a works council – which they intend to do.
“This also removes the accusation that the employees only wanted to get high severance payments,” says Tarim. When that came up again on Tuesday, the three women would have refused a severance payment. “You just wanted to set up a works council and now get your job back.” The Verdi union secretary is now appealing to Sixt to “adhere to the democratic rules so as not to cause further damage”. After all, Sixt is not a small bakery, but a “global player”, i.e. an international company. He criticizes that Sixt has tried to wear down the employees through repeated dismissals. “We take our hats off to these three women who have remained steadfast,” says Tarim. Sixt intends to examine possible legal remedies against the decision “as soon as we have the complete reasoning for the judgement”.
Actually, there should have been a works council at the Pullach car rental company long ago. The brothers Alexander and Konstantin Sixt, who have managed the German market leader with around 6,400 employees and annual sales of EUR 2.3 billion since mid-2021, repeatedly assert that they have nothing against a works council. “If the workforce wants a works council, Sixt will support this,” the company said in a written statement from the beginning of the year. However, there are examples of Sixt employees who want exactly that, but are then dismissed from time to time. While the Verdi union says that this is no coincidence, Sixt – of course – sees it differently. The company argued, for example, “that the core issue is not the establishment of a works council, but rather high severance payments.”
The labor court had already accepted the dismissals in February
Sixt also applied this to the most recent case before the Düsseldorf labor court. The company even fired the main initiator of the works council elections three times without notice for various reasons. When she and two colleagues wanted to set up a works council last autumn, she was dismissed without notice because she was late for work several times in August.
According to the court, she had already received a warning in January for allegedly being late in three cases. Two more terminations against the employee followed in November and December: On the one hand, she is said to have deliberately rented a room that was too small due to the corona restrictions in order to secure a majority in the election committee for the works council elections. She also committed trespassing when she posted a new invitation to the election meeting in the branch in December. According to Sixt, the other employees who were also dismissed were offered a termination agreement, which they rejected.
In February, the labor court had already “considered the dismissals of the main initiator to be legally invalid” and upheld the corresponding action for protection against dismissal. The alleged delays would at best justify an ordinary termination. The LAG now stated that a new warning would have been necessary instead, since the employee was regularly late before August – without consequences.
But what is even more important: Extraordinary dismissal is ruled out “because the plaintiff enjoyed the protection of being an election candidate”. The court also conceded the other two terminations of the employees without notice because there were no indications of alleged manipulation at the election meeting. Even “the possible breach of obligations under works constitution law did not justify the termination of the employment relationship”. And in the third case, the employee who was fired violated the domiciliary rights, but this does not justify “after weighing up all the circumstances, no dismissal”.