Schultz-Hoff decision

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Schultz-Hoff decision is a ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) from 2009 on the compatibility of German and British vacation law with Directive 2003/88 / EC on certain aspects of the organization of working time (so-called Working Time Directive). The Court ruled that a worker did not lose his or her right to annual paid leave if he was unable to take that leave due to illness. The vacation not taken is to be compensated financially. National laws that contradict this principle violated the Working Time Directive.

The decision had a significant impact on German vacation law and - possibly - also on the termination practice of German employers. The European Court of Justice was accused of neglecting these effects. At the end of 2011, the Court of Justice qualified its judgment in the KHS case in the Schultz-Hoff case.

Key messages of the Schultz-Hoff decision

The European Court of Justice had to decide whether an employee absent due to “sick leave” is entitled to take paid annual leave during the corresponding sick leave or the period of incapacity for work and whether and if so if applicable, to what extent an employee who was absent in whole or in part due to sick leave / incapacity for work during the reference period and / or a holiday transfer period is entitled to financial compensation for paid annual leave not taken at the end of the contract.

The benchmark was Article 7 of Directive 2003/88 / EC:

annual leave

1. Member States shall take the necessary measures to ensure that every worker has a minimum of four weeks of annual paid leave in accordance with the conditions of use and grant provided for in national law and / or practice.

(2) The minimum paid annual leave may not be replaced by financial compensation, except when the employment relationship is terminated.

The Court first confirmed that national law or practice may provide that a worker may not take leave during the period of incapacity for work. Such a ban does not violate Article 7 (1) of Directive 2003/88 / EC.

However, if the employee was unable to exercise his entitlement to paid annual leave because he was on sick leave for all or part of the reference period, the right to annual paid leave should not expire at the end of the reference period and / or the transfer period. In the opinion of the ECJ, national laws or customs that provide for a loss of vacation entitlement in these cases are not compatible with Article 7 (1) of the Working Time Directive 2003/88 / EC.

In addition, at the end of the employment relationship, an employee must receive financial compensation for vacation that he could not take due to illness. To the extent that national laws or practices do not grant or exclude such a right, they violate Article 7 (2) of the Working Time Directive.

facts

The plaintiff in the main proceedings, Gerhard Schultz-Hoff, had been employed by the Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund and its legal predecessors since 1971 . In 2004 he was able to work until the beginning of September. He was then on sick leave until September 30, 2005, the time his employment relationship ended. The German Federal Pension Insurance Fund rejected an application for vacation leave in May 2005 on the grounds that Schultz-Hoff could not be granted vacation because of his inability to work. In September 2005, Gerhard Schultz-Hoff was granted an unlimited pension retroactively from March 1, 2005. Schultz-Hoff then sued his former employer for compensation for annual leave for 2004 and 2005. He demanded compensation of € 14,094.78 gross.

First and second instance proceedings

The Düsseldorf Labor Court dismissed the action in March 2006 because the vacation entitlement had expired and there was therefore no entitlement to vacation compensation. It relied on the longstanding case law of the Federal Labor Court. According to this case law, a vacation entitlement expires at the latest at the end of the so-called transfer period, usually on March 31 of the following year in accordance with Section 7  (3) sentence 3 of the  Federal Vacation Act . In the opinion of the Federal Labor Court, this also applied if the vacation could not be taken due to illness. In these cases there was no entitlement to vacation compensation.

Gerhard Schultz-Hoff appealed the judgment of the labor court to the regional labor court in Düsseldorf . The State Labor Court (LAG) wanted to uphold the lawsuit and award Gerhard Schultz-Hoff the coveted holiday compensation. However, it was prevented from doing so by the case law of the Federal Labor Court. In comparable cases, the BAG had always overturned the judgments of the regional labor court, so that lawyers spoke of a "vacation law feud" between the two courts. The Düsseldorf State Labor Court therefore suspended the proceedings and referred the case to the European Court of Justice. In short, the Court of Justice should decide whether the case law of the Federal Labor Court on the forfeiture of vacation and vacation compensation entitlements was compatible with European law.

Proceedings before the European Court of Justice

The Schultz-Hoff procedure was carried out by the ECJ as a so-called preliminary ruling procedure. In such proceedings, the Court of Justice decides on the interpretation of European law (here: the Working Time Directive) on submission of the court of a member state (here: the Düsseldorf Regional Labor Court). The legal interpretation of the ECJ is binding on the national court. The national court speaks its judgment on the basis of the legal opinion of the European Court of Justice and thus decides the outcome of the proceedings.

The Court joined the Schultz-Hoff case (case number C-350/06) and the Stringer case (case number C-520/06), which had been referred to it for judgment by the House of Lords . The House of Lords was the UK's highest appeals court in civil matters at the time. In the UK case, a worker named Stringer and other workers sued Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs , a tax authority with 67,000 employees. In the Anglo-Saxon jurisdiction, the Schultz-Hoff decision is known as Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs v Stringer .

The hearing before the Court of Justice took place on November 20, 2007. The judgment was issued on January 20, 2009. It confirmed the legal opinion of the LAG Düsseldorf, according to which the vacation does not expire in the event of permanent incapacity for work, and thus deprived the legal basis of the conflicting case law of the Federal Labor Court.

Consequences of the ECJ ruling

Judgment of the regional labor court in Düsseldorf

On February 2, 2009, the LAG Düsseldorf announced its verdict in the case of Schultz-Hoff against the German Federal Pension Insurance. Since only a few days had passed since the ECJ's decision, it was assumed that the LAG had already formulated the reasons for the decision and only waited for the ECJ ruling to be pronounced. The regional labor court awarded Gerhard Schultz-Hoff a vacation compensation amounting to 12,081.00 euros plus interest. The Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund accepted the judgment and did not go into appeal .

Change of case law of the Federal Labor Court

As a result of the Schultz-Hoff decision, the Federal Labor Court adapted its case law to that of the ECJ. The BAG took the opportunity to appeal against a judgment by the Cologne Regional Labor Court. It decided that the entitlement to compensation for statutory full or partial leave does not expire if the employee falls ill by the end of the holiday year and / or the transfer period and is therefore unable to work. The BAG thus admitted that its own jurisprudence was contrary to European law, but at the same time noted in a subordinate clause: "In view of its commitment to the interpretation results of the competent court of the European Communities, the Senate does not have to state whether it agrees with the interpretation of the ECJ."

Reactions

While the Federal Labor Court reluctantly accepted the requirements of the European Court of Justice, German jurisprudence criticized the Schultz-Hoff decision and its effects on practice. The Schultz-Hoff decision was particularly sharply commented by the former federal judge Wolfgang Leinemann . Leinemann, from 1991 to 2001 chairman of the 9th Senate of the Federal Labor Court responsible for vacation law, stated that the judgment was "worthless for the understanding of legal contexts". After all, it is suitable to serve as "illustrative material for the low point of the legal situation to which the European Union has reached due to the case law of the European Court of Justice".

Employers were advised to consider terminating the employment relationship in the case of permanently ill employees. This could avoid financial burdens that would otherwise result from necessary vacation compensation. It cannot be proven whether the Schultz-Hoff decision actually resulted in increased layoffs by employees with long-term illnesses. The labor courts do not keep statistics on this.

As a result of the changed case law, employees were able to assert higher holiday compensation claims. For example, the Hessian State Labor Court awarded a cook who had lost her job due to illness a vacation allowance of 29,198.23 euros.

KHS decision

In November 2011, the European Court of Justice relativized the statements made in the Schultz-Hoff case with the KHS decision (also known as the Schulte decision): Case C-214/10 - KHS versus Winfried Schulte - concerned the compensation of a vacation entitlement for the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. The ECJ found that the Working Time Directive does not require that leave can be accumulated indefinitely. A certain time limit should not be exceeded. Beyond such a limit, the annual leave lacks its positive effect for the employee as a period of relaxation. In addition, the employer must be protected from the risk of excessively long periods of absence and the difficulties that this could result in the organization of work.

A forfeiture of the vacation entitlement is therefore permissible under national law if the transfer period clearly exceeds the reference period. In the KHS versus Schulte case, the transmission period was fifteen months, the reference period twelve months. The Tribunal allowed this to suffice; Winfried Schulte's vacation entitlement for 2006 was thus extinguished. In the Schultz-Hoff case, the transmission period was only six months.

The KHS decision was welcomed by lawyers close to the employer as a "necessary correction by Schultz-Hoff", which should have led to a "great relief" at the Federal Labor Court in Erfurt.

literature

  • Jobst-Hubertus Bauer, Christian Arnold: ECJ overturns German vacation law. The Schultz-Hoff decision and its consequences . In: New legal weekly . No. 10 , 2009, p. 631-636 .
  • Hans Georg Rummel: Consequences of the ECJ decision Schultz-Hoff for the vacation law in Germany . In: Labor and Law . 2009, p. 160-164 .
  • Doreen Methfessel: The BAG surrenders to the ECJ! - Long-term sick leave . In: Labor and Labor Law . 2009, p. 276-279 .
  • Gregor Dornbusch, Lara Ahner: Vacation entitlement and vacation compensation if the employee is permanently unable to work . In: New journal for labor law . No. 4 , 2009, p. 180-183 .
  • Steffen Krieger, Christian Arnold: Holidays 1st + 2nd class - the BAG follows the Schultz-Hoff decision of the ECJ . In: New journal for labor law . No. 10 , 2009, p. 530-533 .
  • Jochen Diehl: The decision of the European Court of Justice “Schultz-Hoff / Stringer” on the continuation of vacation entitlement in the event of illness. A holistic view . 1st edition. Diplomica Verlag, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8366-9183-3 .
  • Stephan Pötters, Tom Stiebert: Realignment of the German vacation law: How far do the consequences of the case law of the ECJ extend? In: ZESAR . No. 1 , 2012, p. 23-30 .
  • Jobst-Hubertus Bauer, Andreas von Medem: From Schultz-Hoff to Schulte - the ECJ proves to be capable of learning . In: New journal for labor law . No. 3 , 2012, p. 113-119 .
  • Stephan Pötters, Ralph Christensen: Directive- compliant legal training and wording limit . In: JuristenZeitung . No. 8 , 2011, p. 387-394 .
  • Daniel Gehlhaar: The BAG, the ECJ and the vacation. Or: Schultz-Hoff - it's all about the "nuances"! In: New legal weekly . No. 5 , 2012, p. 271-274 .
  • Stephan Pötters, Tom Stiebert: Pitfalls in Vacation Law - Still No Legal Security for Practice? In: New legal weekly . No. 15 , 2012, p. 1034-1039 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Directive 2003/88 / EC
  2. ↑ Düsseldorf Labor Court, judgment of March 7, 2006, 3 Ca 7906/05.
  3. ^ Federal Labor Court, judgment of April 11, 2006, 9 AZR 523/05, (online) .
  4. ^ Federal Labor Court, judgment of May 27, 2003, 9 AZR 366/02, (online) .
  5. ↑ Steffen Krieger, Christian Arnold: Vacation 1st + 2nd class - The BAG follows the Schultz-Hoff decision of the ECJ . In: New journal for labor law . No. 10 , 2009, p. 530 .
  6. ↑ Düsseldorf Regional Labor Court, decision of August 2, 2006, 12 Sa 486/06 a, ( online ; PDF; 58 kB).
  7. ↑ Landesarbeitsgericht Düsseldorf, judgment of February 2, 2009, 12 Sa 486/06 ( online) (PDF; 224 kB).
  8. ↑ Svenja Sottorf, Martin Hensche: Schultz-Hoff gets his vacation compensation. March 17, 2009. Retrieved February 19, 2012 .
  9. ↑ Federal Labor Court, judgment of March 24, 2009, 9 AZR 983/07, ( online )
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Leinemann: The deformation of holiday compensation by the European Court of Justice . In: The company . No. 8 , 2009, p. I ( online ).
  11. ↑ Steffen Krieger, Christian Arnold: Vacation 1st + 2nd class - The BAG follows the Schultz-Hoff decision of the ECJ . In: New journal for labor law . No. 10 , 2009, p. 530 (533) .
  12. ↑ Hessisches Landesarbeitsgericht, judgment of December 7, 2010, 19 Sa 939/10 ( online ).
  13. ↑ European Court of Justice, judgment of November 22, 2011, C-214/10, (online) .
  14. ^ Jobst-Hubertus Bauer , Andreas von Medem: From Schultz-Hoff to Schulte - the ECJ proves to be capable of learning . In: New journal for labor law . No. 3 , 2012, p. 113 (115) .
  15. ↑ Daniel Gehlhaar: The BAG, the ECJ and the vacation - or: Schultz-Hoff - it is the "nuances" that count! In: New legal weekly . No. 5 , 2012, p. 271 .