Temporary workers can be employed for more than 18 months if corresponding regulations are included in the collective agreement. The Federal Labor Court decided this with a judgment on September 14, 2022 (Case No.: 4 AZR 83/21).
The statutory maximum duration for the deployment of temporary workers is 18 months. However, according to the current decision of the Federal Labor Court, this maximum duration can be exceeded if a different maximum duration for assignment is agreed upon in the collective agreement of the industry. The business law firm MTR Rechtsanwälte explains that this collectively agreed maximum duration is then binding for both the leased temporary worker and his employer, the lessor, as clarified by the Federal Labor Court.
In the underlying case, an employee filed a lawsuit because he had been employed as a temporary worker in a company for almost 24 months. With the lawsuit, he sought to establish that an employment relationship had arisen between him and the company due to the exceeding of the statutory maximum leasing period of 18 months.
The defendant company is a member of the Association of the Metal and Electrical Industry of Baden-Württemberg e.V. (Südwestmetall). Therefore, the ‘Collective Agreement on Temporary Employment’ concluded between Südwestmetall and IG Metall applied in the company. The interest groups have collectively agreed that the maximum duration for temporary employment is 48 months.
The plaintiff argued that this collective agreement does not apply because he is not a member of the union. In previous instances, his lawsuit was unsuccessful, and the appeal before the Federal Labor Court also failed. The Fourth Senate of the Federal Labor Court clarified that Südwestmetall and IG Metall were allowed to make a different regulation from the statutory maximum leasing period. This regulation then explicitly applies not only to the parties to the agreement but also to the lessor and the temporary worker, regardless of their binding to the agreement. The Federal Labor Court decided that a collectively agreed maximum leasing duration of 48 months is within the scope of regulatory authority.
In a comparable proceeding, where the Regional Labor Court had still upheld the lawsuit, the Federal Labor Court also dismissed the lawsuit (Case No.: 4 AZR 26/21).
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