Damage at home is annoying. But if craftsmen have to move in, employees often ask themselves the question: Can I get an appointment outside of working hours? What if that doesn’t work.
Berlin (dpa/tmn) – The toilet flush doesn’t work, the tap is dripping, the washing machine needs repairing: In short, a craftsman is needed. But it is not uncommon for the appointments that you can get to lie within your own working hours. Then the question arises: Are employees actually entitled to paid time off from work for this?
The short answer: usually not. Paragraph 616 of the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, BGB) stipulates that an employee does not lose the right to remuneration if he or she is “prevented from providing the service for a relatively insignificant period of time for a personal reason through no fault of his own.”
However, this means cases such as a death in the family or an emergency in which you “have to help at home”, according to the specialist lawyer for labor law Peter Meyer. A craftsman’s appointment, on the other hand, can be planned – and thus “designed in such a way that it has to be carried out outside of working hours, or that you have to find someone who will let the craftsman into the apartment.”
However, there is one exception: “Namely when you come into the bathroom in the morning and there is a burst water pipe,” says Meyer. “Here, the prevailing opinion says that you keep your salary entitlement for the time the accident is repaired.”
Unpaid special leave as an option
The specialist lawyer for labor law advises everyone who is spared such emergencies in the household to contact their employer about upcoming appointments with craftsmen. Maybe you can make up the time you have to stay at home. With many working time models, it is not a problem anyway to come two hours later – and simply add them to the end.
If this is not the case, there is another option: take a day off. If you have no more vacation days, you can “of course request unpaid special leave, which you usually get,” says Meyer. Strictly speaking, however, there is no entitlement to this.
By the way: Even tenants who are given an appointment by their property management company to read the electricity meter or the heating are not entitled to paid leave – “precisely because these appointments are announced quite a long time in advance,” says Meyer.
About the person: Peter Meyer is a specialist lawyer for labor law and a member of the executive committee of the working group on labor law in the German Bar Association (DAV).
2023-08-21 04:21:37
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