Greater Harmonisation Of Laws On Office Workers And Manual Workers

Co-authored by Walter Poeschl and Matthias Unterrieder of Wolf Theiss

Austria is one of the few remaining countries in Europe that distinguishes between manual (blue-collar) workers and office (white-collar) workers. Some of these differences will be replaced by new rules that will apply equally to all.

One important area in which blue-collar and white-collar workers entitlements differ is sick pay. At the moment, both blue-collar and white-collar workers are entitled to 10 weeks' sick pay for illness and accident. The entitlement increases to 12 weeks after 5 years of service, to 14 weeks after 15 years, and to a maximum of 16 weeks after 25 years of employment (in every case including 4 weeks paid at only 50 percent of salary).