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Fields of activity // Employment law
German employment law regulates the legal relations between individual employees and employers (individual employment law) and also between the associations of employees and employers and between representative bodies of employees and the employer (collective employment law).

  • Fundamental principles
  • Employment relationship

The starting-point of employment law is the contract of employment without which no employment relationship is in fact established. The contract of employment is embedded in a complex system of labour regulations by works agreements, collective agreements, national laws and regulations and by supranational EU directives and EU regulations. Court rulings by the national courts and by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) also have a law-making function to a certain degree.

Contracting parties
An employer may be any natural person and any legal person. According to the definition of the German Federal Labour Court, an employee is someone who commits to enter into the employ of another party to perform work determined by this party in accordance with its instructions which is rendered by the employee himself or herself on the basis of a contract concluded under private law. However, numerous specific definition problems and distinctions do arise in this respect. For example, apprentices, homeworkers, managing directors, commercial agents and freelance staff are not regarded to be employees, even although – in some cases in accordance with an express statutory provision – specific labour regulations are also applied to these groups of people. The labour court is, for example, also competent for legal disputes of people comparable to employees (Article 5 of the German Labour Court Art).

Salaried employees – workers
As far as employees are concerned, a distinction was traditionally made between workers and salaried employees with the more physical work being attributed to the workers and the intellectual and artistic work to the salaried employees. This differentiation resulted in numerous, in some cases absurd, categorisations. A disputed profession was, for example, the striptease dancer (physical or artistic activity?).

Today, the differentiation between workers and salaried employees is only of very slight significance in legal terms, as all fundamental statutory employment differences (statutory periods of notice, remuneration, continued payment of salary in the event of illness, treatment in social security terms, etc.) have been abolished. A distinction is merely still made in some collective agreements (such as in some sectors concerning the periods of notice – mostly deemed permissible by the Federal Labour Court, in any event in the case of short periods of employment). Otherwise, the same employment law today applies to workers and salaried employees. The separation between salaried employees and workers in the civil service was ended by the replacement of the Civil Servants’ Statutory Salary Scale and of the collective agreements for workers by the Collective Agreement for Civil Servants on 1 October 2005. A distinction between workers and salaried employees is also no longer made in the Works Council Constitution Act. The corresponding Article 6 of the Works Council Constitution Act has been rescinded.

Executives
A special group are the executives who undertake the managerial functions in companies below the level of the owner of the business. Special rules apply to them regarding protection against dismissal and they are not subject to the Works Council Constitution Act, although the definition of the term “executive” varies in these two fields of law. The interests of executives are safeguarded by a representative committee whose participation rights are regulated in the Executive Representative Committee Act.

Temporary employees
A further employee group are temporary workers and "marginal" part-time employees. Contrary to widespread opinion, there are virtually no applicable different labour regulations in such situations. These employees are similarly entitled without restriction to protection against dismissal, the continued payment of their remuneration in the event of illness and statutory leave. Previously customary differentiations have long been eliminated as an infringement of the equal treatment principle. However, relief in taxation and social security terms is afforded; as far as employment law is concerned, shorter periods of notice, for example, for temporary employees are permissible (Article 622, Paragraph 5, Sub-paragraph 1 of the German Civil Code).

German employment law can be subdivided into the following specific fields:
  • Individual employment law
  • Contract of employment
  • Creation
  • Obligations
  • - of the employer
  • - of the employee
  • Default in performance
  • Ending / generally notice of termination
  • Collective employment law
  • Collective agreement law
  • Works constitution law and personnel representation law
  • Co-determination law (regulates participation of employees on the supervisory board)
  • Industrial dispute law
  • Strike (warning strike, selective strike)
  • Lock-out

Contacts:
André Löhr
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Wichtiger Grund für die Entziehung der Geschäftsführungsbefugnis
Der Bundesgerichtshof hat durch Urteil vom 11.2.2008 folgendes entschieden:

Ein wichtiger Grund für die Entziehung der Geschäftsführungsbefugnis nach § 712 Abs. 1 BGB liegt vor, wenn das Verhältnis der übrigen Gesellschafter zu dem Geschäftsführer nachhaltig zerstört und es den Gesellschaftern deshalb nicht zumutbar ist, dass der geschäftsführende Gesellschafter weiterhin auf die alle Gesellschafter betreffenden Belange der Gesellschaft Einfluss nehmen kann. Steht fest, dass sich der geschäftsführende Gesellschafter in seiner Eigenschaft als Geschäftsführer anderer Gesellschaften finanzielle Unregelmäßigkeiten zu Lasten des jeweiligen Gesellschaftsvermögens hat zu Schulden kommen lassen, rechtfertigt dies die Entziehung der Geschäftsführungsbefugnis, ohne dass es erforderlich wäre, dass derartige Unregelmäßigkeiten bei der (entziehenden) Gesellschaft selbst bereits festgestellt worden sind.
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