Europe: Responding to COVID-19 and the Workplace

By CMS Employment Law

May 20, 2021

Welcome to the latest edition of CMS On Your Radar.

It comes as no surprise that the majority of the contributions to this edition of On Your Radar involve government measures responding to COVID-19 and the workplace. Yet not all of them are COVID-19 related - as we mentioned in our last edition, workplace equality continues to be a prominent feature. The French Gender Equality Index is a composite indicator using 4 or 5 different measures to arrive at a total equality index figure.
 
In a sign that working from home looks set to stay with us in some form at least, many countries are planning ahead to regulate it. While the terminology varies between remote working, teleworking and the ‘home office’: the concepts all involve working away from the office, (although local laws should always be checked to understand subtle but important variations). The Czech Republic discuss plans to regulate home working which are not yet in place. Other countries have already passed legislation in this area. In Austria an employer must provide digital work equipment for employees who regularly work from home (or bear the reasonable costs of the digital work equipment provided by the employee) whereas the new Turkish regulation on remote working applies to those who permanently carry out remote working. In Slovakia, in addition to a new regulation on working from home, a right to disconnect has been introduced.

Measures on the availability of workplace testing are introduced in Belgium and Germany, with Italy reporting that vaccination for health workers is now compulsory.

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Best regards,

Dr. Christopher Jordan
Partner | Co-Head CMS Employment Group
CMS Germany
T +49 221 7716 354
E christopher.jordan@cms-hs.com