Who goes into partial retirement, in the so-called exemption phase has no claim to vacation. This has been decided by the Federal Labor Court.
A man had been sued, who switched to an employment relationship with partial retirement at the end of 2014. By contract, he reduced his working time to half, but was committed to the agreed block model but by the end of March 2016 in the previous extent to full work. He was then released until the end of July 2017.
According to the employment contract, the plaintiff was entitled to 30 vacation days annually. For the year 2016, the employer granted him on a pro rata basis - calculated on his working hours - eight days vacation. However, the man found that he had a total of 52 leave days for the entire exemption phase.
The Federal Labor Court now saw this differently: "An employee who is in the release phase of a partial retirement employment relationship and is released from work throughout the calendar year is not entitled to a recreational leave due to a lack of work obligations," the judges ruled. The exemption phase is to bring with "zero" working days in approach, according to the verdict.
If someone changes from the work to the release phase in the middle of a calendar year, the leave entitlement must be calculated according to the number of days with a work obligation.
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The lower courts dismissed the lawsuit. The plaintiff had then filed a revision, which now also failed. ( File number: 9 AZR 481/18)