Company holidays – is arranged vacation right?

Can the employer order company holidays?

Many companies take between Christmas and New Year or during other major holidays and send their employees on vacation. The employees often did not choose these days off, but were prescribed by the employer. This causes trouble for many of those affected, since they would have liked to plan their holidays differently and could have used the vacation better at another time. Therefore, the question arises whether the management can really determine the vacation of employees?

Paragraph seven of the Federal Vacation Act (§ 7 BurlG) says the following at the time of the vacation: “When determining the vacation in terms of time, the employee’s vacation requests must be taken into account, unless their consideration of urgent company issues or vacation wishes from other employees who deserve priority from social perspectives.” In principle, the employees can determine their own vacation themselves. A deviation from the operational side is only possible with urgent matters. If the employer can thus adequately justify his company holidays, their determination is okay. However, there are a few things to consider.

What must be considered during company holidays?

“Urgent company concerns” are certainly not the holiday wishes of the boss, who would like to fly into the Caribbean over a certain period of time and therefore also sends his employees on vacation. Likewise, a short -term lack of order or a decline in sales as an urgent company concerns are also not to be regarded, explains Tobias Werner, specialist lawyer for labor law for the editorial network Germany. “The employer is obliged to always check whether other measures are not possible in economic imbalances – for example, a time account or overtime reduction or a change of the layer model,” the legal expert continues. The operating risk should not simply be passed on to the employees.

According to the German Legal Protection Insurance, there are sufficient reasons for company holidays, for example, conversions of the business premises or longer foreseeable periods in which the order numbers are noticeably decreased. This can be the case between Christmas and New Year. However, the employer knows well in advance about the corresponding periods. A short -term determination of the company leave is therefore not possible. At least six months, better a year in advance, the company management should decide on the company holidays. With regard to the duration of the vacation, there are no provisions on the part of the legislator, but according to Tobias Werner, a fundamental decision has been made for a division of 3/5 company holidays and 2/5 individual vacation planning. It is therefore appropriate if the supervisor determines a maximum of 60 percent of the vacation. A complete use of all days off is not legal.

What happens in the event of illness or a lack of vacation days of the employee?

Again and again there are special cases where employees are unsure about what exactly applies to them. What happens, for example, if the employer orders company holidays, but the employee no longer has enough free vacation days for this period? According to the website impulses, this means bad luck for the company, after all, the boss approved the already planned vacation in advance. In this case, the supervisor remained two options: Either he let the employees come and waive the company holidays or he paid the people from work, explains the specialist lawyer for labor law, Dr. Alexander Birkhahn opposite impulses.

And what happens if the employee is sick during or via the company holidays? In this case, paragraph nine of the Federal Vacation Act (§ 9 BurlG) has a clear regulation: “If an employee falls ill during the vacation, the days of incapacity to work are not counted towards annual vacation.” The days on which the employee was sick during the vacation can simply be refunded.

Nicolas Flohr / Redaktion Finanzen.net