Dog care comes first
An employer can change the working hours of its employees. In doing so, however, he must also take your interests into account. If there are valid reasons to the contrary, the employee does not have to accept the changeover. A pet is one such reason. The Hagen labor court found a part-time worker right who refused to accept that he should work seven hours on Fridays instead of five hours. The reason: He had agreed with his fully employed wife that he would do the housework, take care of the dog at lunchtime and, if necessary, look after the 80-year-old father-in-law. Because the extension of working hours on Friday would have shortened working hours from Monday to Thursday, the court did not accept the arguments of household and care for the father-in-law. The animal welfare, however, was interpreted in his favor. A dog cannot be expected to stay alone for seven hours plus travel times. (Az. 4 Ca 1688/20)
School grades are not enough
A table with school grades is not a valid job reference. This has been decided by the Federal Labor Court. In the present case, the employer rated the performance and behavior of an electrician in the form of bullet points and a table with grades. The employee sued because he considered the testimony to be unusual and, moreover, also to be inaccurate. After the Hamm Regional Labor Court had initially decided in favor of the plaintiff, the Federal Labor Court found him right. A permissible assessment of the employee is not given because individual emphasis and differentiation are missing. Special characteristics, knowledge or skills that could make the electrician interesting for new employers could not be derived from it. This is only possible with a running text. (Ref. 9 AZR 262/20)
Vaccination is a private matter
If an employee accepts a voluntary vaccination offer from his employer, he is not entitled to compensation in the event of consequential health damage. The State Social Court of Rhineland-Palatinate rejected a lawsuit against the employers’ liability insurance association. In the case, the catering manager of a hospital kitchen had accepted the clinic’s voluntary offer to be vaccinated against flu free of charge. When an overactive immune system developed a few years later, he attributed this to the vaccination and demanded compensation from the employers’ liability insurance association. This refused, and the social court also dismissed the lawsuit. According to the court, statutory accident insurance only pays in the event of an accident at work. But there is no such thing here. (Ref. L 2 U 159/20)
Doubts about being sick
Employees who submit a sick note immediately after being given notice and who stay away from work until the notice period has expired cannot automatically expect continued payment of their salary. That was decided by the Federal Labor Court in Erfurt. The employee of a management consultancy resigned at the end of the month at the beginning of February 2019 and submitted a certificate of incapacity for work (AU) on the same day. According to the employer, she reportedly announced to a colleague by telephone on the day of the exhibition that she would no longer be coming to work. Contrary to the decision of the lower courts, the court upheld the employer who had questioned the sick leave and had not continued to pay his salary. From the judges’ point of view, the evidential value of the AU was shaken because it covered exactly the remaining term of the employment relationship. (Ref. 5 AZR 149/21)
Training is not a job
Anyone who actually does not receive any training must be paid like an employee. A company must therefore not use this method in order to deploy workers as cost-effectively as possible. That was decided by the labor court in Bonn. An apprentice whose employer had not registered the apprenticeship with the responsible building cleaners’ guild or the employee at the vocational school had sued. In practice, too, there was no training plan for the plaintiff, who was employed as a building cleaner after a brief training period. The labor court in Bonn saw the services provided by the bogus apprentice not being compensated for by the payment of the apprenticeship allowance of 775 euros. Instead, he is entitled to collectively agreed remuneration under the framework collective agreement for commercial employees in building cleaning – that is around 1880 euros. (Az. 1 Ca 308/21) dpa / epd