From BZ/dpa
Anyone who values their colleagues might be happy to give them a present, perhaps cake or flowers. Whether this also works with your own remaining vacation time is another matter.
You don’t have any travel plans this year, but you still have a lot of vacation days left. The colleague, on the other hand, could use additional days off. Giving her her own vacation time sounds like a nice idea. But can employees give away their vacation days to colleagues at all?
First of all: According to the employment contract, employees are obliged to perform their work – personally. “On the one hand, this means that no third party, not even work colleagues, can be commissioned to perform the work as an alternative,” explains Alexander Bredereck, a specialist lawyer for labor law. “But also that neither vacation nor overtime can simply be transferred to colleagues.”
However, there are companies that allow this in certain cases. “Such regulations are permissible as long as the statutory minimum vacation is not affected,” says Bredereck.
“This vacation must always remain with the respective employee.” In addition, in such exceptional cases one must also adhere to the other conditions set by the employer.
The specialist lawyer for labor law refers to individual cases in which employers have enabled their employees in the past to donate their unused vacation time to colleagues with sick children.
However, he advises employers to exercise caution when taking such actions: “Against the background of the extremely rigid case law of the European Court of Justice on vacation, the question should always arise to what extent such donations actually use up the donor’s vacation entitlement.”