New employment contract?
Five points that everyone should check before signing - according to experts
Created: 04/08/2022Updated: 04/08/2022 15:27
By: Andrea Stettner
The most important cornerstones of the job are recorded in the employment contract.
But sometimes there are pitfalls lurking in the document that hardly anyone thinks about before starting a job.
Do you have a job offer in your pocket?
Then congratulations!
However, before you sign the employment contract, you should check a few points that always cause trouble.
1st salary
The monthly salary that was negotiated in the job interview plus other remuneration (e.g. holiday or Christmas bonus) is recorded in the employment contract.
But be careful: "It is important that not only the agreed remuneration, but also any increase after the end of the probationary period or an adjustment to rising living costs
is fixed in writing
," explains Stefan Kramer, specialist lawyer for labor law, on the blog of the Staufenbiel Institute
.
Only in the case of collectively agreed contracts does the salary increase automatically.
In the case of tariff salary, the classification
should also be
mentioned.
2. Job Description & Location
The job description specifies which tasks can be assigned to you.
Here, too, attention should be paid to a precise job title and task description.
Because: The more vague it is formulated here, the more varied are the tasks that the boss can assign to you.
Conversely, you cannot turn down jobs that do not match your qualifications or are poorly paid.
In addition, the employment contract should not provide for
any spatial transfer powers for the
employer , as the Hensche law firm writes on its website.
Otherwise you could very quickly be forced to relocate your workplace to another city.
An employment contract should always be checked carefully for dubious clauses before signing.
© Christin Klose/dpa
3. Trial Period and Notice Period
Prospective employees should also take a close look at the passage with the probationary period before signing the contract.
The duration of the probationary period should be clearly regulated, during which both contractual partners can terminate the contract with a notice period of two weeks.
However, the employment contract should not
contain a so-called probationary period limit
.
"If you sign that, you have agreed on a fixed-term employment relationship instead of a normal trial period, ie in plain language a fixed-term contract," warn the labor law experts at
Hensche.de
.
Wording of such a probationary period clause reads, for example, that the employment relationship is “limited for the purpose of testing” and therefore “ends after the agreed contract term has expired without the need for termination”.
The
notice period
should also be clearly stated in the employment contract, especially in the case of
temporary employment
.
Fixed-term employment contracts can only be terminated early if this has been expressly agreed in the employment contract.
4. Overtime
"Overtime is compensated with the monthly salary" - this sentence can still be found in many employment contracts, but is formulated too generally and is therefore invalid.
At the very least, a concrete number of overtime hours should always be mentioned, which are already covered by the salary, in order to be legally valid.
"It should also be clearly regulated whether overtime can be compensated for with free time and to what extent this is planned," recommends the Staufenbiel Institute.
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5. Post-contractual non-competition clause
Does your new employer want to foist a post-contractual non-competition clause on you?
This must be negotiated
before signing
or have it checked by a lawyer.
Companies want to prevent employees from switching to a competitor or founding a competitor company, usually up to two years after they leave the company.
Otherwise there is a risk of significant fines.
However, such a ban cuts you considerably when choosing a job - because most of the suitable jobs are found among the competition.
Apart from dubious clauses in the employment contract, all three warning signs should ring all the alarm bells anyway - and a job offer should be reconsidered.
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