The reform of personnel leasing (“Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsreform”)

The reform of personnel leasing (“Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsreform”) – Changes in the use of temporary workers.

On 21 October 2016 the German Bundestag passed a law to change employee lending law („Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Änderung des Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsgesetzes“) with the aim of limiting the abuse of temporary workers.  As a result, the employee lending statute (“AÜG”) is reformed with effect from 1 April 2017.  From this date, three major changes will have to be considered by any employer hiring temporary workers, namely:

1. Maximum duration for leasing
Until this change,  the law (para 1 sec. 1 of the AÜG) provided that an assignment of temporary workers may only be temporary.  All uncertainties arising from this vague legal concept in the past have been removed. The new para 1b section 1 of the AÜG n.v. provides a maximum duration of 18 months for such personnel leasing. However, previous leasings will count towards the maximum duration if there are no more than three months between two assignments, para 1 sec. 1 of the AÜG n.v.  Violation of this law is punishable with fines up to EUR 30.000,00.

2. Equal-Pay
Para 8 of the AÜG n.v. bundles the obligation to equally remunerate temporary workers, which, so far, has been dispersed all over employee lending law.  The hirer is obliged to grant temporary workers essentially the same working conditions as its comparable permanent staff.  This particularly includes the question of remuneration.

3. Hidden personnel leasing
In order to prevent the abuse of the preparation of working and labour contracts (“Werkverträge”) the legislator has implemented new disclosure and information requirements pursuant to para 1 sec. 1, sentence 5 and 6 of the AÜG n.v.  Thus, future leasing contracts must explicitly describe and designate personnel leasing as such and a designated temporary worker must be named. Para 11 sec. 2 sentence 4 of the AÜG n.v. provides information about the temporary worker.  These obligations have the effect that submitting a licence only (in order to supply temporary workers), will not be sufficient anymore and a contract for work and labour for appearances sake (“Scheinwerkvertrag”) should be avoided.

Frankfurt am Main,  20 March 2017

For more information, contact:

Annika Peltzer

Rechtsanwältin

ebl factum rechtsanwälte

t: +49 69 74749150 

e: a.peltzer@factum-legal.com