Obligations to provide reasons for employers

As part of the implementation of the EU Work-Life Balance Directive, the Austrian legislator has made various changes to parental leave, part-time work and leave of absence regulations.

One significant change is that since November 2023 in many cases employers are now obliged to provide reasons for dismissal of certain requests.

If the employer rejects or postpones the application of an employee to reduce their normal working hours, he must now always provide factual reasons in writing. This applies in particular to:

• Postponed parental leave
• “short” agreed parental part-time work
• Caregiver leave
• Care part-time work
• Reduction of normal working hours by agreement

Termination due to deferred parental leave or care absence:

• If notice of termination is given due to intended or actual use of deferred parental leave or care absence, upon request employers are obliged to provide the reasoning.
• The employee must request in writing this justification within five days of receiving the notice of termination. The employer then has five days in which to provide the reasons.
• In these cases, there is now a legal protection against termination for cause. They can therefore be contested before the Labour and Social Court. However, if the employer does not fulfil the obligation to provide reasons, this has no effect on the legal validity of the termination itself.

The new regulations came into force on November 1st 2023.