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Vaccination query by employers: do unvaccinated people lose their job?

2021-09-03T16:46:45.055Z


Some employers should be given the opportunity to ask their employees about the corona vaccination. What the planned regulation means in practice.


Enlarge image

A vaccination certificate with proof of corona immunization

Photo: Andreas Arnold / dpa

Are companies allowed to ask their employees whether they have been vaccinated against corona?

This has been disputed for days - this should originally be excluded in a draft of the new Corona Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance.

An absurd situation, because on the other hand employers are obliged to protect their employees and have to come up with suitable concepts for this.

They are even allowed to use random knowledge about vaccinations - just asking is not allowed, the only exception: hospitals.

"In this pandemic, we want to extend this right to information to other areas," said Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) in an interview with SPIEGEL - and that there was agreement in the governing coalition.

Specifically, he named nursing homes, daycare centers and schools.

In these areas, the employees are entrusted to people who need special protection: "How do you want to explain to a relative that the mother died of Covid because the carer was not vaccinated?"

The employers concerned are now allowed to

So it says in the new draft, which is available to the AFP news agency.

What does that mean?

The

"Serostatus"

is about the question of whether an employee has antibodies against corona in their blood serum - that is, whether they have recovered from an infection.

For the

vaccination status

, information is collected about the number and times of possible vaccinations;

Most vaccines require two doses to be fully effective and a certain amount of time for the body to build up immune protection.

The employer can now use this information when

hiring

new employees ("establishment of the employment relationship"), but also for the

existing workforce

.

"This obliges the employees to provide information," says labor lawyer Michael Fuhlrott from Hamburg.

"If they refuse to provide information, they are violating their labor law obligations and can be sanctioned by the employer." In the worst case, that means dismissal.

"Mini step with many restrictions"

"However, it will seldom come to that," says Fuhlrott.

"Such measures must always be proportionate." The first sanction steps would be repeated requests or a warning.

In the end, very few workers are likely to be affected at all.

"The new regulation is a mini-step with many restrictions," says labor lawyer Sören Langner from the business law firm CMS.

"Employers have to look carefully to see whether they fall under these exemptions."

Many politicians were concerned that such rights to ask questions could lead to abuse.

In the event of abuse, employees could be disadvantaged for health conditions for which they are not responsible.

In addition, health information is particularly sensitive private information that is generally none of the employer's business.

Hence the strong restrictions of the regulation:

  • The area of ​​application is limited to Corona, employers are not allowed to ask for other vaccinations.

    "The query must be necessary in each individual case to avert the risk of infection," explains Langner.

  • In addition, the right to ask questions will only remain limited to a few areas of the labor market: in addition to hospitals, where the right to ask questions has existed for a long time, to nursing homes, daycare centers and schools.

  • And finally, the whole regulation is limited to the "epidemic situation of national scope" which the Bundestag has to determine.

    It expires after three months if it does not extend parliament.

    According to the current status, that would be until December 11th of this year.

A broader obligation to provide information, for example to enable work in an open-plan office, is not provided for in the draft law.

“It would make sense.

But I don't see a majority in parliament at the moment, ”said Spahn in an interview with SPIEGEL.

If you decide against a vaccination, you don't normally have to fear for your job, says labor lawyer Fuhlrott.

"The request should give employers the opportunity to deploy their employees appropriately; they have no right to evaluate the vaccination status." First and foremost, the superiors would have to look for ways to use unvaccinated persons in such a way that they do not endanger any of their wards.

"The hurdles for a termination are as high here as before."

It could look different, however, when it comes to the permanent termination of an employment contract or a promotion.

"The possibilities for unvaccinated people are limited here, and employers can react to this in a similar way to a new hiring." However, it is difficult to predict how something like this would be assessed in individual cases before a labor court.

With material from AFP

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2021-09-03

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