Employment Law

Labour law regulates the legal issues related to employment relationships. Employment relationships are structured by the employment contract which is concluded between the employee and the employer. Employment contracts are embedded in a network of labour law provisions: laws, regulations, collective agreements and company agreements. The regulations of the European Union are of increasing significance for labour law; these are normally Directives which have to be implemented via laws in Austria.

Labour law can be divided into the following areas:

Employment contract law or employment relationship law (individual labour law):
these are the legal provisions which regulate the individual legal relationship between employee and employer. They deal with questions of the establishment or termination of an employment contract and of the rights and obligations resulting from this contract which is concluded by the parties to the contract (employer and employee).

The legal provisions are distributed among different laws, whereby there are laws which apply to all employees and which regulate a specific aspect of the employment contract (e.g. laws on holidays), but there are also laws which regulate all aspects of employment relationships for certain occupational groups (e.g. the Angestelltengesetz or Salaried Employees Act).

Employment relationship law also includes employee protection law. These are protection standards in public law which are linked to the employment relationship. These legal provisions often link aspects of employment contract law and employee protection law, e.g. in the Arbeitszeitgesetz (Working Hours Act). You can also find information about this part of labour law in the section on occupational health and safety.

Labour relations law (collective labour law):
these are the legal provisions which regulate the structure, function and organisation of industry-wide (trade union law) and in-company employee representatives (in-company industrial relations law). The most important labour relations law is the Labour Constitution Act (Arbeitsverfassungsgesetz), the first part of which regulates collective law - in other words above all the legal basis for collective agreements. The second part of the Labour Constitution Act deals with in-company industrial relations law: this regulates employee participation via the works council or the shop steward, and particularly its (or his/her in the case of an individual) tasks and powers.