PyLadies Workshop

Speaker 1 [00:03]

Hello, everybody. My name is Kea Lave. I'm a data engineer, and I'd like to thank PyLadies for having us, Tech Workers Coalition Berlin, for this info session, which is very much relevant for us today, tech workers. I'm a volunteer with the Tech Workers Coalition, and later on, I'll introduce that group later. I'll let Oren introduce himself.

Speaker 2 [00:30]

Hi, my name is Oren. I am also a tech workers coalition member and also a I work at a start-up here in Berlin. I'm also like a Works Council member there So I have some experience with the topic through my day-to-day activities

Speaker 1 [00:47]

Yeah, we have decided to discuss contracts and terminations considering the economic climate here in Berlin and in other places right now where tech workers are vulnerable to being part of the mass layoffs in their companies. So for this talk, we'd have first an introduction of what the Tech Workers Coalition Berlin is, and then we'll have a discussion on contracts, basically what should be the minimum that you see on your contracts and then we'll discuss about terminations kinds of terminations that's happening in Berlin and how you can defend yourself or navigate it or challenge it and then maybe at the end we'll have a Q&A in case you have some more questions because we understand that this kind of things can be very individualized yeah just a bit of maybe a disclaimer we are not lawyers. Having said that, we have done a lot of trainings and experience with labor rights in Berlin. I'm a member of EG Metall, and I guess Oren is also a member of a union. He's a member of Verdi. Right. So, sorry. Okay. Yeah. So, right now, Tech Workers Coalition is basically a volunteer grassroots group of tech workers here in Berlin. It's like the landing page for people working in technology. In the tech industry, it's not just developers, but also people who are doing UX or customer service work within the tech sector. We collaborate with labor groups, academics, and other organizations like trade unions while maintaining autonomy. There are various tech workers coalition around the globe, I think it started in Silicon Valley, but we also have other autonomous branches in other parts of the world, as you can see. We deal with common issues in tech, like classic workplace issues, like pay disparity, long hours and lack of transparency. Our members try to kind of like discuss and solve discrimination and workplace issues. We also work with other organizations in understanding harm caused to the public by tech, for instance surveillance. And like I said, you know, we also work with other tech workers on you know building solidarity and alliances with other tech workers not just you know engineers and developers this is a bit of an old slide in Germany about like the collective bargaining power in tech in other sectors like a public service and the financial services there's more you know collective bargaining or they are more empowered than us in the past there's always this feeling that tech workers are lucky because we are paid more but we have seen in the last year or so that we are also dispensable to companies and we are also the most vulnerable in terms of you know collective power. Yeah so with TWC Berlin we also do workshops and info sessions on for being Works Council property tech relations we have learning groups and organizing for power sessions so tech workers Berlin was instrumental in helping workers in various companies like Spotify hello Fresh SoundCloud where Orin worked was in building their works council. So I urge you to look at the website for more information and you can join us for sessions and general assemblies which happens every month. have one coming up on the 19th on wednesday yeah so um oren will discuss the contracts first

Speaker 2 [05:28]

Thanks, Kay. Cool. So this is like an overview of some of the things that you can expect in employment contracts in Germany. Again, none of this is legal advice. We're not lawyers. This is all suggestions and information, and we hope that it's helpful. So we're going to talk a little bit about working time, probation periods, vacation, your notice period when you end your employment relationship, overtime, on-call, and some information about salary and pay transparency. OK, so one high-level thing that is true about individual contracts in Germany is that if you have something that is in your contract that is more favorable than what is guaranteed by law, then that is valid. But if the contract says something that is less favorable than what is stated by law, those provisions are invalid. You can safely sign a contract that says that you only get two days of vacation a year, because German law supersedes your contract on those things. I wouldn't recommend signing that contract, but I would look for a different job. But you definitely can still safely sign that contract and you will still get your legal minimum vacation time. So working time, Germany has a 40 hour work week like many other countries. They're also quite strict about the distribution of that. Technically speaking, it's okay to work more than eight hours in a single day as long as that doesn't happen very often. And so, for example, it's not legal to have four 10-hour days in your contract. That is against what German law has laid out in the Federal Working Time Act. One thing that's kind of interesting that I think is relevant to a lot of software developers is the period of rest. Employees must have an uninterrupted period of 11 hours in between shifts. And working on Sundays is also often not permitted unless there's compliance with stricter regulations. So particularly there's a law that has like nine reasons that you would be allowed to have people work on Sundays. And most tech companies do not like fall in there unless there's something that's strictly necessary to maintain operations during that time. Yeah, so on-call, there's like active on-call when you've been paged and you need to do something. There's also the inactive on-call period where you're just like waiting around. Maybe you have paid your duty on your phone. So inactive on-call must be compensated in Germany, and active on-call must be compensated as your regular work time. But the period of rest also applies, technically speaking, to when you get called for work on a call. So if you get woken up at 3 a.m. to deal with a page in the middle of the night and it takes an hour to resolve, technically speaking, you're not required to show up to work until 3 p.m. the next day. Obviously this is not done in practice. In many cases, like I know in my company, this is not typical. But it is a thing that you can keep in your back pocket, or if you are getting kind of sick of this, or you're finding that it's not acceptable, that is something that you can look into. I mean, that also, if you're not working, you're also not technically getting paid also, so that's also something you have to balance, but I've seen situations where somebody was being called in on Sundays, had to just keep working all the time, and they were just getting completely exhausted, and so when we brought this up with the HR team, and we were like, this is not okay, it's also a violation of the law, that was a big moment for them. Salary and compensation. No matter what your contract says, no matter what anybody tells you at any time, you are allowed to share your salary with anybody. You don't have to ask your permission from your manager, you can just do it, it's your personal information, You can put it in your Slack status. You can post it on Facebook. It sounds like a joke, but actually at HelloFresh, they had an open salary initiative with a website to collect salary information. And it was met with a lot of animosity from management of the company, but it's legal. And to promote the initiative and get people to sign up for it, a lot of the main organizers there put their salary in their Slack status to encourage people to participate. So totally illegal, and it's absolutely illegal to punish you for doing something like this. Also, all employees in Germany, once your company is, like, I don't know, 20 or 50 people, I don't remember the threshold, you're entitled to make a wage transparency request. And the Wage Transparency Act is meant to provide insight into gender inequality and pay in your company. So every two years is the minimum. You are entitled to see the average salary for men and women in your position. Given that there is more than six people per gender in your role, the reason for that is to make sure that you can't guess any individual's salary from this. So there has to be a big enough sample size. But this applies to you even if you're at a company without a union or without a works council, just anybody in Germany can write this letter to their HR team and say, I would like to know my wage transparency information. Cool. Vacation, Federal Paid Leave Act. All of these laws actually have good English translations available online. Some of them even on the German website, some of them on websites for labor law firms. The legal minimum is four weeks paid vacation. That accrues. So you're not entitled to all of your vacation on January 1. You get 1 12th of your vacation every month until you get to six months of employment, at which point you're entitled to the full year's vacation. So once you hit July 1, you could Book the rest of your vacation by then. Asterisk on this one. Technically, if you work until the end of July for a company, you can take all four weeks during that time, and then you go to another job. Your next employer could ask you how many days you took at your previous company and deduct that for your allowance from your next job. I don't know how often that happens, but that is something to be aware of when you're exercising this right. Some companies will let you kind of like, your budget might show up in the HR software as you having your full allowance from the beginning of the year. But that's like a courtesy the company would give you if that's something that you have. That's what my company does. It shows up, your full balance for the year shows up in January. But technically speaking, that's a courtesy and a risk that they're taking. And they can withdraw that at any point. Yeah, so the other thing that's really tricky, people always want, like, a lot of people I've heard say that they really want, like, vacation rollover. This is something that German law actually strictly is kind of designed to prevent rollover because German law is trying to be designed to force companies to make sure that everybody is taking their vacation by the end of the year. It's only if there are very strict operational reasons why the company can say no to your vacation before the end of the year. And if they do that, they have to let you roll it over or pay you out. So it's not even usually the case that you'll get a rollover. It's more likely that they'll be required by law to pay you out. But it always depends on your situation. Again, I'm not a lawyer. There's lots of variables with this kind of thing. But generally speaking, if your company allows rollover, great. Don't tell the government. But you might not get it, generally speaking, because German law is kind of designed to discourage it. Probezeit, probation. Six months is pretty standard in Germany. There's a minimum notice period of two weeks, like my company does four. So that would mean if the company wants to let you go during your probation period, they have to give you at least two weeks' notice. Your employment contract will stipulate exactly how much time you have. And if you're on your probation, unfortunately no reason is necessary to terminate an employee. So yeah, even in a company that has a Works Council, normally an objection might help you. An objection from the Works Council to your termination might help you in a normal termination, but in a probationary termination, there's not a whole lot of tools in your box, unfortunately. So that's something to be aware about when you're taking a new job. Great, so I'm gonna hand it over to Kay to talk about terminations.

Speaker 1 [15:38]

Maybe before I started, like a show of hands, how many people here are in companies with works councils or are members of unions, of trade unions? Oh, that's okay. Yeah, that's pretty good. So I ask because the terminations usually are a bit different when you have a works council where they can negotiate for you. um so the the the content of this part is basically for people who have no works council and are going to like um challenge their terminations individually so yeah so basically um the first there are two kinds of terminations that are happening right now in berlin one that we're going to discuss is dismissal due to operational reasons and i bet that you've heard of it from companies that have been doing some layoffs. So it's betribs bedingte kundigung. This is a unilateral termination, meaning you don't have to sign anything, the company gives you your walking papers that say, hey, you're terminated because of operational reasons as of X time. So this holds up in labor court. there's an entrepreneurial decision that leads to redundancies but at this point like you know the letter that you usually get from your company does not give all the details and that's fine that's you know allowable this also holds true if there are no other vacant positions for employees who are potentially affected by the dismissal within the company and then this also holds up if the company if the employees who are in need of protection are selected for dismissal so you know it's a kind of like a weird term social selection so if the company made of people according to a social criteria if they follow like age seniority disability dependents the number of dependents usually this is the part where companies at least in Berlin that have you know where layoffs happened recently this is the part where they do not usually follow because it's just you know like massive and quick um so um yeah when you are laid off it must be in writing so it has to be on paper signed by the authority in your company um any it's not here but like yeah yeah verbal or email notices are invalid um yeah um yeah for those with the works council they must be heard one week prior to the dismissal uh spur law

Speaker 2 [18:31]

Yeah, we're going to.

Speaker 1 [18:37]

So the first is age, seniority, like you should like disability and dependence.

Speaker 2 [18:45]

Okay, so German social selection criteria is a little bit of a weird term, but it's essentially a way to quantify how vulnerable you are, but you can only use these four categories to decide how vulnerable somebody is, legally speaking. So you get points kind of for how old you are. You get points if you have a disability. You get points if you've been at the company for longer. And you get points if you have dependents. You get points for each of those. There's different schemes for how much each one is worth. And then everybody with your job is ranked. And they're supposed to lay people off from the bottom first, people who have the fewest points. So it's it's in practice like in theory. It's kind of a nice idea in practice. It's quite strange But it does kind of create the structure for challenging terminations, which we'll talk about later Yeah, it's meant to Protect people who are like older towards the end of you know If you're 55 and you're close to retirement, it might be really hard for you to find a new job for example people people who are older tend to stay on unemployment for longer than people who are younger earlier in their careers if you look at the statistics but also I think we should we can do one more but we will take questions at the end so I think that it can be true that elderly people can count or if you have a spouse who depends on you that could be possible but okay yeah I'm not sure

Speaker 1 [20:41]

If you challenge your termination, you have three weeks from the receipt of your dismissal notice letter, when you receive it, to challenge it. So that's when we say that they must take court action. But basically, if you have a lawyer, you can tell your company that I reject the termination. The employee must also notify the Bundesagentur that they are a job seeker within three days, and it's all done online. So this is also necessary for you to be able to get your unemployment benefits. One important thing about challenging terminations is that the goal of challenging termination is not to give you more benefits, it's to reinstate you to your job. Obviously, in practice, it happens differently, but that's the reason why, like, when you challenge your termination, your lawyer says to the court, we reject, you know, the reasons for termination. So, as far as they are concerned, you should have your job at the end. That's the goal of challenging your dismissal. the other thing in the other you know dismissal process that's happening right now is which is where the company asks you to sign an agreement that you leave the company so for the first part for the first dismissal it's unilateral you don't sign anything basically this one you agree that you will leave the company with certain provisions so in practice For instance, you know, like, we've heard in some companies that they use performance review to, like, ease you off the company, and then you kind of, like, resign. You're signing something with them to leave the company. Or they tell you that, yeah, like, there are redundancies. We're letting you go, and we, yeah, we want you to sign this so that you don't challenge the terminations later. So there are certain provisions to it. So, one of the reasons why companies are doing this is because they want to avoid the lawsuit. Because when you sign this, you cannot contest it in court. The effects of it, you cannot contest in court. You live with what you have signed on paper, basically. Another thing is that maybe if you're an employee, you can find a job quicker than having your notice period. So that's also one benefit for them than when you give notice unilaterally. You can also negotiate for your exit terms. This means that you can ask for maybe a higher compensation, severance, you can ask for other things like equipment, longer garden leave, so practically everything is open for this kind of thing. The caveat is that you cannot challenge it once you sign it. But there are problematic things about it, is that one, like I said, you cannot contest it in court. Second is that you have to wait three months to get your unemployment benefits. So with the first instance of dismissal, the first example, you can get your unemployment benefits within, you know, after your notice period, basically. With this one, after your notice period, you still have to wait, yeah, three months to get your unemployment benefits, yeah. This also applies for your health insurance and social security contributions, so you have to pay those out-of-pocket. Right. Yeah. Yeah? Okay. Good. Yeah. So, in those, in both cases, you can get compensated, basically, but there is no legally mandated minimum for severance payment. There is a guideline, and in law, but the lowest in practice is two weeks' salary per year of employment. Like I said, the aim of challenging your dismissal is that you get your job back. So it's not about severance or getting, you know, better exit terms, but to get your job back. Having said that, in practice, obviously a lot of us don't want to go back to a company that kind of like, you know, discarded us. So we ask for other things um say you can ask for higher severance a longer garden leave this is very relevant for people in with blue card or have pending visa applications so we have seen cases in um um where employees ask the company to extend the garden leave because the person has um a permanent residency application in a month so instead of like having the garden leave at a certain point you kind of like work for the company at a lower pay for a longer period of time so that can happen too like i said a lot of these things can be negotiated um whether as long as you know you have like the representation and the resources for it um in our in the case of my company that had a massive lay layoffs i really um encourage people to get a lawyer because if you just go to your HR on your own, they'll just say no. You know, you have to put a fear of God in them, basically. Yeah, you can also ask for your equipment, language of your soy news or referral letter. As we know, in Germany, there's, like, coded words for your referral letter. So I've had people in my company review the referral letter that they got on their exit terms to see if, you know, the company made some, you know, shady notes on them. yeah. In practice, the company has the right to withdraw the severance offer when you challenge the termination. But usually, in most of the cases, the labor court reinstates the original offer if the company rejects the giving more compensation. So for people who have like legal insurance or a member of the union, it tends to be a win-win situation or like, you know, you have nothing to lose, basically, because you will get some money, whether it's the one that they offered or more at the end. Yeah, it's very rare that the judge or the mediator says that you cannot get anything from the company when you reject them. Yeah. So we'll talk about the cost of direct dismissals and terminations. So yeah, it's a very procedural process at the first instance. So stages of it in the first instance is usually a procedural process where your lawyer checks if the company laid you off properly so they have to check if they notify the Bundesagentur properly if like all the boxes were ticked if your exit letter or or exit contract mentioned for instance that you you have to notify the Bundesagentur, like the company has the responsibility to let you know that you have to apply for unemployment benefits. If it's not there, it's invalid, for instance. So it's about taking the boxes, that's the first instance. And usually in practice, like people kind of like have a number in their head of how much they want to get or what they want to get from the company. it kind of stops there at the first mediation. When there's no decision, one party appeals or rejects it, then the process goes forward. So for people who have legal insurance, they have lawyers, it's covered. For people who are members of union, your legal advice and And representation are covered by your dues. People who do not have the means and the resources to do this financially, they can apply for legal aid. Those who are union members will get representation from DGB, the umbrella group of the major unions in Germany. And the union dues are about 1% of your gross salary, and it's tax deductible. And they usually get it every month. So it can, the process can be long. It can take up to like, I don't know, six months to a year, I was told. In my case, it was over in like a month and a half. And I didn't really do anything. So it was painless because my union lawyer did everything. Maybe the biggest stress for me was like, you know, translating the German language document. But for the most part, I thought it would be like a very fraught and run-out process, but it was not. So for me, it was like something that was worthwhile to do. Having said that, I had the resources for it, and not a lot of people have that kind of means, actually, yeah. So maybe before we end, Oren can show you, like, an example of termination agreement.

Speaker 2 [30:47]

Yeah, so what does one of these things look like? It looks like this. It's very boring. It looks Almost exactly like a contract Because it is a contract you're agreeing to leave Generally speaking Company name and the employee show up here this section would show the name of the employee What their job is and how long they've been employed termination both parties mutually agree and it would take effect on a particular date this is just a footer with nothing important inside of it the header also has nothing important inside of it salary will be paid properly until the expiration of the employment it's like well yes thank you that it would be illegal to not do that based on the annual salary here this example has a garden leave here, so that would mean that you are employed, but you're not required to work all the way through the end of your period, which tends to be nice, because when you've essentially been notified that you're getting fired, you don't really want to work there anymore. Or some people maybe would see the value of garden leave differently than others. That's like an individual choice how much it means to you. Any additional income. So this is basically non-compete. Like if you start making money from another job during your garden leave and the company finds out about it, they are entitled to reduce your severance essentially. So, uh, I would not recommend doing that. You have to continue to inform the company about illness because, uh, they're still on the hook for your, uh, health insurance compliance and stuff like that. So, um, if you, yeah, so vacation, uh, you won't get paid out for vacation. They will offset that against your notice period, essentially forcing you to take any outstanding vacation before the end of your employment. That's pretty standard. I don't think anybody would get paid out in Germany for a vacation that they haven't used. Severance payment. So this is the interesting part. I've seen very different numbers here. I've seen everything from two weeks salary to three months salary, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that the first offer is never the last offer. So they will always attempt to lowball you just in case you do accept it. They'll probably do something along the lines of saying that you have three days to sign this, try to put big-time pressure on you, say this is the final offer, which is almost always a lie, and then they will also say you have no chance in court if you want to contest this. All three of those things are just intimidation tactics to put pressure on you to do that. I would always recommend, you know, if you're considering the offer, talking to other people about it especially a lawyer perhaps and making sure that you know they say that you might have like a legal obligation to do some to respond you don't you're not gonna but they you know they do have the right to rescind the offer and And if they give you a deadline, they may be more open to negotiation before that period has expired. In my experience, if you do not take this agreement and you do not respond within time, they will try to find another way to fire you, essentially, whether that's through direct termination or something sneaky like all of a sudden we think that your performance has dropped and now you're on a performance improvement plans and now you're being fired for personal reasons basically so that's also not always a given but I once a company has decided that they want you gone they will eventually try to get rid of you like one way or another so it is an And unfortunately, born out to be true in my experience. So again, I'm not a lawyer, but I would, you know, always lead with, you know, the argument in written communication when you're talking about severance packages, like, oh, that amount of money, like, I want to work here, and that amount of money is not enough to make me not want to work here. Your argument is always that you want to keep working here. If you're open to other offers, then that's when you say that is not enough money to make me want to quit. This amount of money might address the damages to my satisfaction. That's just my experience. I think that some people have different experiences maybe just asking directly, but I wouldn't put it in writing personally, I would, you know, verbally say a number if that's something that would get you to sign the agreement. Always discuss this with your own individual legal counsel. Yeah, basically, there's also, like, you can end early at any points with seven-day notice. I would only ever use one of these if you have a new job that you want to start immediately. Otherwise, shortening your notice period could be problematic for you in terms of you're paying for your Social Security contributions, paying for your own health insurance, and not receiving unemployment benefits during that time. This says you can't sue us if you sign this. This is pretty much the whole thing for the company, is they just want you to go away without suing them. And liability and risk are big factors for companies when they're making decisions like this. So one of the other things that you can do is if you are open to negotiating, is being clear that if they offer a particular number that you will accept it and you will agree to the waiver of your right to challenge the dismissal because at the end of the day, mostly what they want is for you not to sue them. You have to return all the stuff your company gave you, including the laptop and all of that stuff. That's quite understandable. And then this is actually my favorite part, the reference letters. So I don't know if everybody is kind of familiar with how German reference letters work. They're not so relevant in tech for the most part. There's a lot of international talent. But it's always good if you don't know what kind of company you're going to be applying to. Maybe you're going to apply to a more traditionally German company where asking for this is more standard. But you want to make sure that, like, here it says benevolent. You'd also want to make sure that it says very good or good. The reference letter is kind of mapped to German grades in the school system, so like one, two, three, four, five, six, where one is the best, six is the worst, and there's very subtle differences in the wording of your letter that signals to HR at your new company that actually this, it sounds nice, but actually this person sucked at their job. So, you know, there's really, like, they're heavily coded, and if this is something that's, like, important to you, making sure that you get, like, a letter with, like, a one or a two is kind of important. Because, for example, there's, like, a sentence, I saw one example that was, like, a sentence that says, the employee fulfilled all responsibilities to our full satisfaction that's like a three out of in where one is the highest um but like in order to get a one it has to say the employee always performed to our fullest satisfaction and we will regret seeing them go and like things like that so i think that as a as somebody who's not from germany i found this to be quite entertaining um reading about the subtle differences here but you have to decide for yourself how important that is to you. Discretion. Don't spill company secrets online. Don't badmouth your employer. Those kinds of things are found here. This one. This is basically the company saying, like, we don't have a legal right to instruct you how to deal with unemployment benefits and Social Security, that's on you. This is kind of saying you need to tell the Agentur für Arbeit, the Federal Employment Agency, that you are looking for a job within three days of receiving your termination or signing this agreement. That's something that you can do online by yourself. It's very easy. Yeah, that's fine. That's mandatory whether or not you're going to challenge the dismissal also, the three-day period. And this is saying negative consequences for the entitle of unemployment payments may arise. that means you will not get, if you sign a piece of paper, you will just not get unemployment benefits for three months. Typically tends to be 60% of your salary. So when you're thinking about the severance package that they've offered, make sure you account for the fact that you will get two to three months of, three months of pay at 60% of your salary and subtract that from the severance package to kind of think about actually how good it is. So the comment is, you can still apply for Arbeitslosengeld You can, but that's also, once you've been on Arbeitslosengeld 1 for a year, then you would move to Arbeitslosengeld 2. I mean in these three months where you don't get the RGA1, you can still get money from the job center, which will pay for your health insurance.

Speaker 1 [42:30]

and all of that.

Speaker 2 [42:32]

Okay, I'm not so familiar with Job Center to be honest, so Yeah, but the other thing is I think that one once the Once the agency sees that you've signed something that says that you're willing to leave the job. I think that changes really, okay Well, like I said, we're not lawyers. So

Speaker 1 [42:57]

I just want to add, and this is very more relevant to non-Germans, only apply for ALG-SPI, not the Bürgergeld, because you will be penalized if you apply for citizenship down the line.

Speaker 2 [43:13]

Yeah, I do. Yeah, I think that all gets five has implications for people who are applying for citizenship and and permanent working status So you wouldn't Okay, so I think that we're pretty much at the end of this Yeah, so here's the thing about three days The other thing that's not Here is actually you are entitled to a certain number of days off during your notice period to look for new work. I believe it's at least three, potentially five. I have to double check that. But basically, if you've been laid off, you get extra days to look for work that your company is legally obligated to give you. Outside of your remaining vacation, outside of normal sick time allowances and stuff like that. Yeah, this is basically saying you're waiving your right to claim more holiday back, there's no overtime, basically you're not going to get anything else, and if you try to take them to court, it's just not going to work. that is pretty much it for this agreement. Is it here? Great. And I'm gonna hand it back over to Kay for the final bit and then we'll do Q&A.

Speaker 1 [44:52]

the Q&A. Yeah, maybe just to emphasize something, if you challenge a termination, it's a time-sensitive matter. It's three weeks. You can be served your termination while on holiday. So, or even if you're on, I don't know, maternity leave, parental leave, right? Like, it counts. So, yeah, just keep that in mind that you have three weeks to sort everything out. Because otherwise, if that three weeks lapses, what they offer will stand. Anyway, like I said, I would like to thank Pai Ladies for having us. I hope this information session was helpful to everybody to give you ideas if you're in this position. We have a TWC Stamptish general meeting on the 19th at Stuylturo Friedrichshain. Everybody is welcome. And we have, like, some sources here for if you need resources on works councils, contracts, your general labor rights. Thank you. Thank you so much. I will be passing the mic if you're...

Speaker 2 [46:14]

If you're comfortable.

Speaker 1 [46:14]

comfortable with that and if there are some questions you would like to remain anonymous again you can paste them in slido hello first thank you for your patience we were here okay so I have two questions one is that I have had a situation where I haven't had really stood up for my rights but I have a toy goodness from the time and it would be nice if somebody reviews it who I can have to review this twigness so i usually don't really share it with people but it's like i mean people might ask for it to be honest like um i've had friend i've had friends who reviewed you know other frances so ignis um or you know um i've had lawyers review it as well again this is you know if you have that resource um you can check it online as well there are certain codes um If you have a works council have them review it as well. I don't know. Yeah Yeah, Verdi does does that if you if you are a member of Verdi, like I don't know the English term They have like a woman who's like reviewing Zeugnis and I was there and you can like give her your template of like what you would like to have and she improves it and this is like yeah it's like really nice and then you can give it to your employer and tell them to sign it so I think I would recommend that because like other way around they will like sometimes they don't even know but sometimes it's also like because they they want to hurt you but it's it's much easier if you write it if you let her like review it give it to give it to them let them sign it so you get like a really nice service yeah huh yeah like but you yeah you can go there and send it to her but you have to be like a member yeah so if you are a member of the Union you can get consultation immediately it's the representation the labor court where you have to wait for a few months to get that but I've had friends who've done that actually yeah they've asked like literally like the most like basic questions on holiday for instance they answer my second question is can we all join the organization the labor I mean organization or the video

Speaker 2 [48:47]

We're from Tech Workers Coalition, which is a grassroots organization that is not a legal body at all, but anybody can join a trade union in the relevant sector. Between the unions, they have agreements about which companies and which sectors fall under the responsibility of which union. Most tech companies are kind of with Verdi, but there are also some companies, it always depends, like IG Metall does a lot of manufacturing, autoworkers, Verdi does a lot, Verdi is kind of like the everybody else union. Access-oriented communications, hairdressers, bouncers, people who work in nightlife might be represented by Verity, for example. If you would want to find out the competent or responsible union and then sign up online usually.

Speaker 1 [49:51]

change union you know like you can transfer your union membership to another with no problem if you decide to yeah any other questions yeah yes since you mentioned about workers union and also this legal support I don't maybe can compare both case as a immigrant I'm also part of ready but I'm quitting for

Speaker 2 [50:16]

waiting for financial reasons.

Speaker 1 [50:18]

But I see there's financially

Speaker 2 [50:19]

financially more

Speaker 1 [50:20]

more beneficial for me.

Speaker 2 [50:21]

For me, it's cheaper.

Speaker 1 [50:22]

cheaper if I pay some legal consult support in English because also like I didn't know these informations to say there was a red member yeah so in like

Speaker 2 [50:33]

support with this

Speaker 1 [50:34]

with the darkness I didn't know this

Speaker 2 [50:37]

So... So...

Speaker 1 [50:39]

One case that I can tell you where a difference between legal insurance and union insurance in this case is that sometimes a private lawyer will think that your case is not worth their time. So we've had, like, because in my company's case, some of my colleagues have legal insurance and they went to the lawyer. But knowing, you know, the state of the startup environment, the lawyer was like, yeah, the payoff isn't that great high for me. So I just accept the offer. That was the advice. In my case, when I went to the union, he was like, yeah, maybe they have a case. But if you want to go through this, we'll go through this. It's not a problem for them. It's their job to go through the process with you.

Speaker 2 [51:36]

Yeah, what I will say about that is, yeah, legal insurance on its own does tend to not cost as much as union membership on a monthly basis, depending on your salary, though. But the other thing is, like, union membership also has other things that you have to decide if it's worth it for yourself. Like, you can sometimes get some consultation about taxes. Sometimes you can, you would, the biggest thing is that you'd get access to strike pay, the strike fund. So if your company goes on strike, the union will pay your salary for the amount of time that you're not working. And that's something that is one of the main draws for members. But does that kind of answer your question about, I mean, like, oh, sorry, you also said, like, it was hard to find information. That's something that I think that... Yes, from this...

Speaker 1 [52:27]

It's easier to learn math than German.

Speaker 2 [52:29]

It's in German, it's a different language.

Speaker 1 [52:30]

When I navigate through German, my partner is German, so I learn a lot with her, but I don't annoy her all the time.

Speaker 2 [52:36]

all the time yeah so our our uh union representative uh oliver hauser from verity has been working hard on making better english materials this link here tech.verity.ee de um has a lot of stuff in english and so he's really working on making this more available to people and so that is something that loon unions are lacking on right now I think is support in other languages but it's also something that we're seeing developments on in in real time essentially so yeah so while while you

Speaker 1 [53:20]

while you are in a legal

Speaker 2 [53:21]

are in a legal battle with your company, what is your employment status? So do they have to employ you until the legal battle is over, or do they fire you and if you win, you get reinstated? So here's how this works. This is different depending on whether or not you have a works counsel in your company. So if you do not have a works counsel and you challenge the dismissal. Normally, the first instance of labor court is usually pretty quick. The costs are usually pretty stable. I've seen things between like $1,000 and $3,000 for legal fees during that time. Sometimes it's depending on the severance package. I think it also differs if you're part of a mass dismissal or not. But essentially, depending on when they schedule the case, if the case is during your employment, then you're employed all the way through. If the case can't be scheduled until after, you are unemployed starting at that time. If you get your job reinstated, you will get back pay for the time in between. But if you have a works council at your company and they have objected to your termination for one of the specific reasons in the Works Constitution Act that says Works Council may object to a termination, if the Works Council does their job properly and objects, you will be paid for the time in between the end of your contract and the date of the court case. So, and that is true if you lose the case as well. So you'd still get paid during that time. So Works Council objection gives you some legal advantages in court and means that you'll get paid all the way through the court case, even if the court case is ending after your employment. Thank you.

Speaker 1 [55:20]

We have some more questions.

Speaker 2 [55:24]

Thank you, and can you recommend any materials in English regarding the

Speaker 1 [55:27]

regarding the maternity.

Speaker 2 [55:28]

maternity leave and parental leave and yeah basically where to get information from good question um i will i would hope that's going to be on the verity website one day

Speaker 1 [55:44]

I think you've just shown like the English pages from Verdi

Speaker 2 [55:50]

There was a So yeah, there are some materials there. I haven't reviewed them. I don't know what the status is. But yeah, look at that. Go all over. But oh yeah, one thing I'll quickly say that I meant to add on to something that Kay said about representation. It's really important. I think that it's really important to pick a law firm that only represents works councils and employees. I would not ask a company to represent me if that company also represents companies and corporations, because those lawyers might just kind of be compromised, essentially. Like, they might actually agree that they have the right to terminate you, and that might be the kind of lawyer who says, you don't have a chance, you better just take the money. Because lawyers are humans, and they have political preferences and alignments and stuff like that. So I always recommend the law firm that I work with quite often, DKA. They're here at the bottom. They only work with work councils and individuals, and I trust them. And I always send, when people are having legal issues, like I need individual representation, I always send them to DKA, and they haven't, and I haven't heard any issues at all from the people that I've sent that way so far. Question. Can you repeat your suggestion for

Speaker 1 [57:32]

for the unemployment

Speaker 2 [57:33]

employment salary type

Speaker 1 [57:34]

type for the non-Germans because I didn't know there were different things

Speaker 2 [57:37]

are different things that you can apply that you you

Speaker 1 [57:39]

that you mentioned that non-Germans should apply for...

Speaker 2 [57:42]

apply for our

Speaker 1 [57:43]

Arbaid Mosque for two minutes.

Speaker 2 [57:44]

Yeah, so basically, this is a little bit where I'm not an expert, again, so, but if you are on Arbeitslosengeld 1, that is, that would begin, if you are terminated, like, that would begin immediately after. If you sign a termination agreement, in most cases, maybe not all cases, you would not be eligible for Arbeitslosengeld 1 for three months after the end of your employment. There may be other options for compensation that I personally am not familiar with. But there's also like Arbeitslosengeld 2, which is the same as Hartz IV. And if you're on Hartz IV, that could complicate your citizenship process.

Speaker 1 [58:37]

Basically, don't do hard sphere.

Speaker 2 [58:38]

Don't do yeah

Speaker 1 [58:40]

man don't do hard steer

Speaker 2 [58:42]

If you can avoid it, it might complicate your bid for citizenship.

Speaker 1 [58:48]

Could I just chip in there? Sure. I'm sure that it would complicate it if you're on Hotsphere at the time you apply for citizenship, but you can definitely have been on Hotsphere in the preceding era and get citizenship. There have been some cases, but I think after some period you can get it, you can get a citizenship, but for me, when dealing with German authorities, I try to be on the safe side, because their interpretation of law can be different for every be-amter, you know? And it might just give you complications further. It might also vary by which state you're in. Because citizenship is processed by the state. Exactly, yeah. So I might have been lucky in where I was. Yeah, possibly, yeah. Anyway, maybe Aldrin has something. Oren has to go because it's time. But really, Last one. I just wanted to mention that...

Speaker 2 [59:51]

mentioned that Arbeitslosengeld 2 or

Speaker 1 [59:53]

that's why our Hartz IV is now

Speaker 2 [59:55]

I guess rebranded as

Speaker 1 [59:56]

Branded as Bürgergeld.

Speaker 2 [59:58]

So things change a little bit. I'm not sure in which response.

Speaker 1 [60:01]

sure in which respect, so just be careful. So yeah.

Speaker 2 [60:03]

Now, soon it'll be called Burgergate.

Speaker 1 [60:09]

Aldrin has a question. Last question from Aldrin.

Speaker 2 [60:17]

So you mentioned like basically two routes down the line you get fired or you sign an agreement to go Yeah, a third route I've seen is you agree to get fired and not sue Which allows you to get all the benefits of getting fired instead of you having terminated Or having agreed to terminating your contract

Speaker 1 [60:40]

Say it again. What's the configuration there? You agree?

Speaker 2 [60:44]

So the two options of you not working at the company anymore that you mentioned, one of them was you get fired full stop. The second option you talked about extensively was you agree to stop working in this company with the severance package and everything, which in effect from the perspective of Arbeitsamt is you quitting your job. Therefore, you don't get the three months unless you can show a reason that you had to quit. Like, for example, if you go on burnout and your doctor says, like, please quit your job, then those three months are voided and you get the money for that. A third option to stop working at a company is to agree to be fired and not sue the company for it. Yeah. So that's typical in mass dismissal scenarios. Like, if you're selected for termination as part of mass layoffs, you will often get a financial incentive to sign a piece of paper that says you won't sue. so you might get an extra 3,000 euros in your severance if you sign a piece of paper saying that you won't sue them but you're still getting fired and you're not agreeing to get fired so that's very common in mass layoffs but not common in individual termination

Speaker 1 [61:59]

it for us. Thank you. Again, there's resources online and feel free to also look for TWC Berlin on Twitter, Mastodon as well. We can answer questions from there. Alright. Thanks.