Christel Schmidt decision
The Christel Schmidt decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of April 14, 1994 is an important decision in the field of labor law . In Case C 392/92, the Court of Justice had to decide whether there was a transfer of business within the meaning of EC Directive 77/187 if only one employee fulfills an operational function and this operational function is transferred to another provider.
Christel Schmidt was employed as a cleaner for the rooms of a Sparkasse branch in Wacken . In February 1992, she was due to restructuring this branch terminated , and the purification was transferred to a company that already cleaned most of the other buildings of the savings bank. The cleaning company offered Ms. Schmidt the takeover at a higher monthly wage than her previous monthly salary. However, the company was not prepared to work under these conditions, since in their opinion the considerable increase in the area to be cleaned would in reality have led to a deterioration in their hourly wages.
Ms. Schmidt then appealed against the dismissal by means of a dismissal protection suit. To clarify whether the guideline is to be applied here, the Schleswig-Holstein State Labor Court suspended the proceedings and submitted it to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling .
The ECJ ruled that in the absence of a transfer of material resources for a transfer of business, a function succession may be sufficient, even if the tasks were carried out by a single employee. Therefore the termination was ineffective and the employment relationship was transferred to the cleaning company.
In the period that followed, the ECJ changed its criteria for a transfer of operations - a permanent economic unit with a certain organizational structure must now be taken over. According to today's view, the facts should therefore be viewed as a mere functional successor and not as a transfer of business.
