If digitization of the world of work, then (also) as a home office. So it seems, at least. The home office is seen as the ideal of a flexible, digitized and limitless world of work. Logically that innovative companies now act and offer their employees home office or promise to keep or gain qualified workers and applicants. The legal design contains manifold pitfalls.
The LAG Berlin-Brandenburg recently denied the question of October 10, 2018-17 Sa 562/18 The question of whether the employer is entitled to assign a home office workstation (television center) to the employee solely because of his employment contract law.
The facts
of the employers employ the plaintiff as an engineer; The employment contract did not contain any regulations to change the work location. The employer offered the employee to do his job in the home office after an operating closure. After the employee was not ready for this, the employer terminated the employment relationship for an important reason for persistent refusal to work.
Justification
The State Labor Court considers the termination, like the first instance labor court, is ineffective. The employee is not obliged to make the telework offered to him. The employer cannot unilaterally assign this activity to the employee on the basis of his employment contract law (Section 106 GewO). The circumstances of a work that can be done exclusively in your own apartment cannot be compared to an activity that is to be exercised in a permanent establishment together with other employees of the employer. The employee loses direct contact with his colleagues and the opportunity to exchange ideas with them is significantly reduced. The limits of work and leisure are also fluid. The employee is more difficult for the company's advocacy and the unions represented in the company. The fact that workers can still be interested in the better compatibility of family and work in teleworking, for example, does not change the fact that this form of work can generally not be assigned to an employee unilaterally by the employer.
Practical information
The employer's right to issue instructions and management is (still) reaching its limits when unilateral assignment of a home office workstation. A forward -looking employment contract design is once again required here. In addition, a home office agreement should be carefully designed in order to be as flexible as possible, but at the same time to ensure a reliable legal framework.
