Temporary contracts and solo self-employment are common in certain industries such as radio and TV production.
In a decision published on Monday, the Lower Saxony-Bremen State Social Court (LSG) emphasized that this should not be to the detriment of young mothers when calculating parental benefit entitlements if they were unable to work for months due to the pregnancy.
Marcus Young
Editor in Business.
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In this case, a camera assistant had signed temporary contracts and was unable to continue the physically demanding work during pregnancy.
At the time she was unemployed.
After the birth of her child, the district responsible for parental allowance assumed an income of zero euros for five months.
Because the parental allowance was too low, the woman went before the social court: the district was only allowed to take into account the months in which she worked.
The LSG agreed with this reasoning.
The legislature has overlooked the case of dependent chain employment, in which a new employment is out of the question for reasons of occupational safety.
The "particular health risk" of pregnant women should not put them at a disadvantage when calculating parental allowance.
In order to fill the gap in the law, the social judges declared that the statutory sickness regulations would have to be applied analogously for the five months without income.
The parental benefit is calculated based on the average income of the last twelve months before the birth of the child.
The law lists exceptions to this, for example for pregnancy-related illnesses and for times when maternity benefit or parental benefit was paid for an older child.