Continued payment of remuneration in case of inability to work due to alcohol addiction
> May 2015
Continued remuneration payment at inability to work due to illness requires that the illness occurs without the employee's fault. The parties of the legal dispute now decided by the BAG were disputing about the question of fault in inability to work in an employee with an alcohol addiction.
The employee was once again admitted to hospital with severe alcohol poisoning after two in-patient therapies for his alcohol addiction. Subsequently, he was unable to work for ten months. The employer, responsible for continued remuneration payments for a period of six weeks, believed that this new inability to work due to the repeated recurrence of alcohol abuse was not without fault in the sense of the Continuation of Remuneration Act (Entgeltfortzahlungsgesetz). The BAG found that due to his addiction fault in the sense of § 3 continuation of remuneration act is lacking in an employee generally suffering from an alcohol addiction even in case of relapse after therapy.
The BAG generally assumes that alcoholism is an illness and the resulting inability to work is, according to the current state of medical insight, not due to any fault of the alcohol-addicted employee. Based on a relapse rate of up to 50% after alcohol withdrawal therapy, the relapse is in most cases due to illness and addiction, which mostly excludes fault. Due to the burden of evidence, any doubts are to the burden of the employer.
Result:
Alcoholism of an employee generally must be classified as an illness and will not cause lapse of continued remuneration payments of the employer at a relapse even after completed withdrawal therapy.
