4-6 hours of work.
August 9, 2009 | 20,00 EUR | answered by Andreas Scholz
I am currently on parental leave, and the parental allowance will be discontinued from August 25, 2009. However, since my parental leave runs until January 2011, I would like to start working again from October. I have two children, aged 2 years and 11 months. At the moment, I would like to work only 4 hours and later increase to 6 hours, but I know that my employer does not want that. What can I do to come to an agreement? I would like to sincerely thank you if you could help me with this.
Dear questioner,
In your case, you have probably already informed your employer that you want to fully utilize your parental leave, thus not wanting to take up any activity in the company for up to three years.
Now you have changed your mind and would like to work part-time, where the exercise of an activity of up to 30 hours per month is permissible. In addition, it is a prerequisite that your company has more than 15 employees.
The change to a part-time position, after having already informed the employer that you will not be working during parental leave, is indeed possible according to a ruling of the Federal Labour Court, as long as there are no urgent operational reasons on the employer's side. One such reason is given, for example, when the employer has hired a full-time replacement for the duration of the (originally communicated) parental leave who is not willing to reduce their working hours, and other comparable employees are also not willing to reduce their working hours.
If there are no urgent operational hindrances, you have a right to part-time employment during parental leave, which you can assert in court if necessary. However, in order to not hastily create a confrontational situation with your employer, which could be detrimental to a healthy work environment in the long run, I recommend that you try to resolve the issue outside of court with your employer again, possibly involving the works council as a mediator.
I hope to have provided you with an initial legal orientation. If you have any uncertainties, feel free to ask.
Kind regards,
Andreas Scholz, Attorney at Law
