On October 21st, 2016 the Bundestag passed a law tochange employee lending law („Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Änderung des Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsgesetzes“) with the aim of limiting the abuse of temporary workers. As a result, employee lending law (“AÜG”) will be reformed with effect from April 1st, 2017. From this date, three major changes will have to be considered by an employer hiring temporary workers, namely: 1. Maximum duration for leasing: So far the current law (para 1 sec. 1 of the AÜG) provides that an assignment of temporary workers may only be temporarily. All uncertainties arising from this indeterminate legal concept in the past have been removed. The new para 1b section 1 of theAÜG n.v. provides a maximum duration of 18 months for leasing. However, previous leasings willcount towards the maximum duration if no more than three months are between two assignments, para1 sec. 1 of the AÜG n.v. Violation of this law is punishable with fines up to EUR 30.000,00. 2. Equal-Pay: Para 8 of the AÜG n.v. bundles the obligation to equally remunerate temporary workers, which, so far, has been dispersed all over employee lending law: The hirer is obliged to grant temporary workers essentially the same working conditions as its comparable permanent staff. This particularly includes the question of remuneration. 3. Hidden personnel leasing: In order to prevent the abuse of the preparation ofworking and labour contracts (“Werkverträge”) the legislator has implemented new disclosure and information requirements pursuant to para 1 sec. 1, sentence 5 and 6 of the AÜG n.v. Thus, future leasing contracts must explicitly describe and designate personel leasing as such and a designated temporary worker must be named. Para 11 sec. 2 sentence 4 of the AÜG n.v. provides information about the temporary worker: These obligations effect that by submitting the licence only; in order to supply temporary workers, will not be sufficient anymore and a contract for work and labour for appearances sake (“Scheinwerkvertrag”) should be avoided.
Annika Peltzer
