Bad news for the unvaccinated: In quarantine, you risk losing your salary

2021-08-26T10:37:11.553Z

After weeks of vaccine shortage, anyone can now be vaccinated against Covid-19. Anyone who does not do so is at risk of losing their wages in quarantine.

After weeks of vaccine shortage, anyone can now be vaccinated against Covid-19.

Anyone who does not do so is at risk of losing their wages in quarantine.

Employees who consciously decide against a corona vaccination from BiontechPfizer, Moderna & Co. may risk their salary in the case of quarantine.

A lawyer has now clearly pointed this out.

Quarantine salaries are capped by the Infection Protection Act

Normally, the salary payment in the quarantine case works like this: Does an employee have to go

into quarantine

through no fault of their own at the instruction of the health department

(for example after contact with a corona sufferer or after a trip)

, with a few exceptions *, the employer is obliged to pay the employee a continued remuneration, more precisely a compensation payment, in the amount of the net salary in the first six weeks.

The company can get this payment back from the state authorities.

This is how it is regulated by the

Infection Protection Act (Section 56 IfSG).

More on this:

Quarantine and continued payment of wages: Will the salary continue to be paid if I am not working?

There is no compulsory vaccination in Germany

Labor law experts have always spoken out in favor of continued wages for unvaccinated people in quarantine and illness.

After all

, there is no compulsory vaccination

in Germany and so far it was not possible to vaccinate yourself at any time due to the vaccine disease.

But the latter has changed fundamentally: there is now enough vaccine available -

whoever wants to be vaccinated receives a vaccination offer

A conscious decision against immunization could therefore have immediate consequences for employees, as a lawyer warns.

Also read:

Corona vaccination: what happens to nurses who do not get vaccinated?

There is now a vaccination offer for everyone - this affects salary payments

The reason is an addition to the Infection

Protection Act, which was incorporated into the Measles Protection Act

on March 1, 2020: "After that, those who

could have avoided quarantine by vaccination

will

not receive any quarantine compensation,

" explains Anne-Franziska Weber, lawyer at the consulting company Ecovis, in an interview with

Focus Online

So far, those affected have not yet been able to circumvent the quarantine obligation through a Covid vaccination, because the corresponding vaccination offer did not exist or the vaccination progress did not allow this.

This is no longer the case.

"This in turn affects the claim for compensation," said the legal expert.

This

applies, of course, not for employees who can not be vaccinated

"If an employee is not vaccinated through no fault of their own, they are entitled to quarantine compensation," said the expert.

Also interesting:

Corona: Do I get a sick leave if I have to be in quarantine?

Vaccination status can be requested from the employer

However, so that employers can check whether there is a right to quarantine compensation, they also need to know whether their employee has been vaccinated. Can the boss then simply ask?

"From a purely labor law perspective, employers could be entitled to information in this case," said Weber.

"The prerequisite for the claim is that disadvantages can arise without the information.

That is the case here. ”

The employer cannot obtain information about the vaccination status from any other means