Violation of equal treatment and equal pay principles

Pur­suant to sec. 8 (1) sen­tence 1 of the Law on Tem­po­rary Employ­ment (AÜG, Arbeit­nehmerüber­las­sungs­ge­setz), the tem­po­rary employ­ee assigned must be grant­ed for the peri­od of assign­ment to the hir­er the essen­tial work­ing con­di­tions includ­ing remu­ner­a­tion applic­a­ble in the hir­er’s busi­ness for a com­pa­ra­ble employ­ee of the hirer.

This rule for equal treat­ment com­pared to the hirer’s reg­u­lar employ­ees is called the ‘equal treat­ment prin­ci­ple’. With regard to equal pay, this rule is called the ‘equal pay principle’.

These rules may be devi­at­ed through a col­lec­tive agree­ment for tem­po­rary work.

How­ev­er, if a tem­po­rary employ­ment agency vio­lates these prin­ci­ples with­out this being per­mit­ted by a cor­re­spond­ing col­lec­tive agree­ment, fines of up to €500,000 may be imposed. This is all the more prob­lem­at­ic because equal pay rules are very com­plex. Equal pay does not sole­ly apply to the hourly wage of the customer’s com­pa­ra­ble employ­ees but to all wage com­po­nents under­ly­ing the pay­roll of the customer’s com­pa­ra­ble reg­u­lar employee.