The end of con­tin­u­a­tion of salary for Non-Vac­ci­nat­ed Cit­i­zens?

On 29 Sep­tem­ber2021, the Con­fer­ence of Health Min­is­ters de­cid­ed that from 1 No­vem­ber 2021, at the lat­est,non-vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple will no longer be able to claim com­pen­sa­tion if a quar­an­tine or ac­tiv­i­ty ban is im­posed on them. Ex­cep­tions are made, for ex­am­ple, for peo­ple who are not able to re­ceive a vac­ci­na­tion for med­ical rea­sons.

This should not be mis­un­der­stood, be­cause it does not mean - as is be­ing read a lot these days - that the em­ploy­er will in fu­ture be ex­empt from con­tin­ued pay­ment of salary for non-vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple. Only the com­pen­sa­tion or salary re­place­ment pay­ment ac­cord­ing to § 56 para. 1 In­fec­tion Pro­tec­tion Act (IfSG)is meant. As long as the em­ploy­ee is pre­scribed sick­by their doc­tor and thus un­able to work, he or she is en­ti­tled to con­tin­ued pay­ment of salary ac­cord­ing to the Re­mu­ner­a­tion Con­tin­u­a­tion Act (Ent­gFG) for up to 6 weeks. This also in­cludes sick­ness due to the Sars-CoV-2 virus.

In ex­cep­tion­al cas­es, the em­ploy­er can be re­leased from the oblig­a­tion to con­tin­ue to pay salary if the em­ploy­ee has caused the in­ca­pac­i­ty to work him­self/her­self and the em­ploy­er can prove this (e.g. trav­el­ling to a risk or virus vari­ant re­gion with­out suf­fi­cient, pub­licly rec­om­mend­ed, vac­ci­na­tion;pro­vid­ed that there is an ob­jec­tive pos­si­bil­i­ty). How­ev­er, this ex­cep­tion is han­dled ex­treme­ly re­stric­tive­ly by the courts.

In case in­ca­pac­i­ty to work and quar­an­tine co­in­cide, the em­ploy­er is en­ti­tled to con­tin­ued pay­ment of salary, which has noth­ing to do with com­pen­sa­tion ac­cord­ing toIn­fec­tion Pro­tec­tion Act (IfSG).