News-Archive

For several years now, employers have been increasingly addressing issues of environmental protection and its implementation in the company. Besides the environmental policy factors, employer branding and the improvement of the company's own brand serve as driving forces for companies. Many ideas have been implemented or are maturing. Even proceeding on the basis that many issues are handled in the interests of the workforce and will not or are not expected to meet with resistance from the works councils, one should not lose sight of what a works council is legally entitled to demand. As plausible as the co-determination of the works council is in case of the closure of a company car park, as implausible this would seem when it comes to questions concerning the separation of waste.

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With effect from 1 July 2020, the independent commercial law firm Oppenhoff has appointed cor-porate and M&A attorney Sarah Scharf as partner, and labor law attorney Alexandra Groth and litigation and arbitration attorney Dr. Anna-Gesine Lock as junior partners. These steps up the career ladder are in response to the attorneys' contributions to the sustained success of the firm’s clients.

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According to the BMF letter of 24 April 2020, it is now possible to apply for a (partial) refund of the advance payments already made for 2019 by means of a lump-sum loss carryback.

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The corona crisis not only affects companies, but also has an impact on the operation of public authorities. In the opinion of the German legislator the German Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) cannot conduct investigations or cannot do so within the usual timeframes, as companies are apparently not responding to the authority's inquiries or are responding with a considerable delay.

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Oppenhoff has recruited the financial law expert Dr. Wolfgang Kotzur for the expansion of its banking and capital markets law practice. He is transferring from Simmons & Simmons and previ-ously worked for ten years as a solicitor for two large international law firms in London as well as for three years in Frankfurt.

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Short-time work has become a crucial corporate instrument to counter the temporary loss of work due to the Covid 19 pandemic. But what happens if there are signs of a further decline in work that can no longer be countered by short-time work alone? Does short-time work rule out the possibility of dismissals for operational reasons? Does a dismissed employee automatically drop out of the short-time work scheme? And could the employment agency even be entitled to repayment or damage claims?

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Engineering companies with customers all over the world are facing the same problems as a result of the Covid-19 crisis: Corona has brought important projects to a standstill shortly before completion. Either it is not possible to finish assembling plants at customers abroad, to make them available for commissioning, or to carry out the final inspection and approval – so-called “acceptance” (“Abnahme”) - of plants that have already been fully installed because staff are unable to travel abroad. In many cases, remote support offers an alternative way for companies to remain involved and to provide instructions or explanations.

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30 April 2020 – Our partner Markus Rasner on unternehmervertraute.de

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Little attention has been paid to employee participation to date in the context of the corona pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis. Employee participation offers various possibilities to provide the company with liquidity or to reduce wage expenses, and at the same time to create an incentive to increase the company’s success beyond the mere preservation of jobs.

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In its social protection package, the legislator had included a new provision in § 14 (4) of the German Working Hours Act [Arbeitszeitgesetz – ArbZG] which makes it possible in exceptional emergencies with a nationwide impact, particularly in epidemic situations of national significance, to permit changes for certain work of employees for a limited time period as exceptions to the existing working time regulations.

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