The district court in Nuremberg fined two store managers at a H&M branch in Nuremberg for allegedly harassing a works council member. The accused had canceled special tasks and a wage bonus for the works councillor, which the works councilor understood as punishment for her commitment. Specifically, according to the penalty order (available to FashionUnited), the store managers had revoked the sales employee’s additional function as Sales Advisor Advanced, which includes, for example, the locking function, safe and key authority. Due to her work on the works council and on the occasion of repeated releases from work, the works councilwoman was no longer able to carry out this function satisfactorily, according to the accused.
Penal orders with the same content had previously been issued against the two store managers. Both lodged an objection to this, so that on July 20th a public hearing was held before the District Court of Nuremberg, in which the allegations from the penal orders were publicly read out. Immediately afterwards, legal talks took place between the parties involved in the process. One of the two accused then withdrew the objection, so that the penalty order issued against her became final (fine). The second defendant had limited the objection to the legal consequences (the amount of the penalty). Both now have to pay a fine.
Charges affect individuals, not the company
In a statement to FashionUnited, an H&M spokeswoman said: “Functions at H&M mean taking on additional tasks beyond the general job. A functional allowance is paid accordingly. If colleagues no longer perform the additional task, the functional allowance will no longer be paid. According to the Works Constitution Act, colleagues may not be better or worse off because of their office. If colleagues were to keep their functional allowance although they no longer perform the function, this could be equated with an improvement in status.”
The spokeswoman also points out that in this case it was not H&M as a company that was prosecuted, but two store managers as private individuals.