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Employers are not allowed to impose stricter quarantine rules if they are not necessary from a state perspective (symbol image)
Photo: Violeta Stoimenova / Getty Images
Employers must continue to pay employees if they issue stricter quarantine rules than those required by the authorities for returnees from corona risk areas.
This was decided by the Federal Labor Court (reference number 5 AZR 154/22) in Erfurt.
A food manufacturer from Berlin provided the precedent for another corona judgment by the highest German labor court.
The plaintiff, a holiday returnee from Turkey, had been banned from entering his company despite a negative corona test.
He successfully defended himself against the company regulation, which did not provide for any payment during the prescribed fourteen-day quarantine.
»Hygiene measures must be proportionate«
The lower court, the Berlin-Brandenburg State Labor Court (reference number: 4 Sa 644/21), had already ruled in favor of the employee.
Even experts had therefore expected that the employer's appeal would be rejected by the judges of the highest German labor court: »The decision does not come as a surprise.
Employers may order more extensive hygiene measures than the law provides, but these must be proportionate.
This proportionality was not given for the judges here, «said the Hamburg specialist lawyer for labor law, Michael Fuhlrott, to SPIEGEL.
flg/dpa-AFX/AFP
