In the coming weeks, there may well be stupid situations at work, and management consultants are no different from cleaning crews.

The team arrives at the customer and wants to enter the building - but the customer only grants access to their buildings to vaccinated people.

What should the boss do there?

His staff ask who is vaccinated and who is not?

Patrick Bernau

Responsible editor for economics and "Money & More" of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

  • Follow I follow

Such situations are not unusual.

Journalists already have appointments for which they have to be both vaccinated and tested - after all, it is not yet clear to what extent vaccinated people can transmit the Delta variant.

But the employer is not allowed to ask his employees about the vaccination status, at least that is the majority opinion among labor lawyers.

Few lawyers think the pandemic outweighs protecting health data.

The Ministry of Labor also takes a clear position: "The employer has no general legal basis to ask about the vaccination status," says State Secretary Björn Böhning

(SPD).

And: "As long as there is no compulsory vaccination, the question of vaccination must not have any consequences under labor law."

Many such questions will be solved very pragmatically in these weeks.

The employer tacitly presupposes the vaccination and everything goes well.

Or the employee takes care of it himself if he can't get in somewhere.

And for special trips, the vaccination status is asked anyway, and nobody complains.

Where else can the employer send his people?

But where the employment relationship is bad, it can get complicated. What should an employer do if he is not allowed to know whether he can still send his employees to the customer? Transfer everyone to the back office? Reject the orders and fire the employees? Sue the customer so that he can also accept unvaccinated personnel? One thing is certain: many such questions will end up in court. All those involved can only dream of legal security for months.

It would be good if there was a political solution to the question. However, this can still take a while. On September 10th, the current Corona occupational health and safety ordinance will become invalid, so it will be revised anyway. But some in Berlin believe that a regulation is not enough for this question. It takes a real law. Realistically, however, this will only happen after the federal election and the formation of a government, i.e. not before November.

And what should even be in such a law? Trade unionists and privacy advocates worry that labor law will go wrong. If the employer can first ask whether the employee has been vaccinated against Corona - will such a right to information soon be introduced for other vaccinations? In the end, even for certain diagnoses? In any case, things get complicated when the employer is allowed to know about the vaccination one day, but the employee cannot be vaccinated for health reasons. The next question is obvious: Is that really the case? What is it then?

A general vaccination requirement could send the problem of the right to information for the employer into oblivion.

Individual trade unionists can at least imagine speaking about whether a right to vaccinate information can be created for the time of the “epidemic situation”, which would not only be limited to the pandemic in terms of content, but also in terms of time.

Either way: A quick solution is not to be expected.