Germany

An applicant, who injures himself during a “trial day” at a potential new employer, is covered by statutory accident insurance protection. A “trial day” should enable employers to select a suitable applicant, and therefore has an objective economic value

Fixed-term employment agreements without objective grounds are only permissible under German law for a maximum duration of up to two years. Exceeding this maximum duration by only one day, due to a business trip, leads to an unlimited employment relationship, as a business trip paid by the employer is not part of the employee’s leisure time, but part of the employment relationship and therefore, counts as working time

Following a ruling by the German Federal Constitution Court and changing its previous case law, the German Federal Labour Court had ruled in January 2019, that the limitation of an employment agreement not based on objective grounds is generally invalid if the employee has ever been employed by the same employer before. This case law has now been concretised by a new ruling from August 2019, whereas this prohibition of pre-employment does not apply if an employee is rehired by the same employer 22 years after the termination of his first employment relationship

In order to comply with the latest case law concerning vacation law, the employer will need to provide its employees with substantial information regarding their vacation entitlement to enable the forfeiture of vacation not taken

An employer may be entitled to extraordinarily terminate the employment relationship with an employee, who makes untrue allegations about other colleagues via WhatsApp, which are likely to seriously damage a colleague’s reputation

An employee’s holiday entitlement only expires at the end of a calendar year, if the employer has previously informed the employee about his holiday entitlement and the expiry periods. According to latest ECJ case law, the employer is even obliged to request the employee to take his holidays. A German Regional Labour Court has now ruled that such obligation does not only refer to the holiday entitlement from the current calendar year, but also to possible remaining entitlements from previous calendar years

The prior notice of mass dismissals towards the employment agency, which is required under German law when dismissing a large number of employees, is effective, even if the employer was already determined to dismiss the employees at the time the notice of mass dismissal was submitted to the employment agency. The notice of termination can indeed be given to the employees right after the notice of mass dismissal was submitted to the employment agency

A general works agreement, providing that trade union officials who “regularly” work overtime hours are compensated for all such overtime hours by a lump sum of 9 days of additional leave per calendar year, is invalid. Such an agreement does not determine the criteria for overtime compensation as clearly as required, and furthermore violates the principle of equal treatment under the German Works Constitution Act (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz)