Which public holidays apply to remote workers? I am working remotely for a company in Germany from Germany. The company is in one state and my place of work is my home in another state. In Germany, we have different mandatory holidays in some states. This is the case with my employer. Currently, there is a discussion, if I have to work when there is a public holiday in my state. In my opinion and based on the sources I have found I must not work on public holidays of the state where my place of work is. Per my contract, my place of work is my home. I have found one source, that says the following: Maßgeblich für die Feiertage sind weder der Sitz des Arbeitgebers noch der Wohnsitz des Arbeitnehmenden, sondern die tatsächlichen und rechtlichen Verhältnisse am Arbeitsort. Which translates roughly to: Neither the employer's registered office nor the employee's place of residence is decisive for public holidays, but the actual and legal circumstances at the place of work. I have tried to find a confirmation for this statement in the actual laws, but I did only find one example where something like this is mentioned: Erste Durchführungsbestimmung zur Verordnung über die Einführung gesetzlicher Feiertage § 2 : Für die Arbeitnehmer gilt als Feiertag der für das Territorium festgelegte Feiertag, in dem der Beschäftigungsbetrieb seinen Sitz hat oder in dem sich der mit den Arbeitnehmern vereinbarte Arbeitsort befindet. Which translates to this: For employees, a public holiday shall be the holiday established for the territory in which the employment enterprise has its registered office or in which the place of work agreed with the employees is located. What is confusing me here is the 'or' in this law. I am uncertain how to understand the or in this sentence. In my opinion, it could be either one of those: It's the where the office sits or where you work from, depending on someone's choice or terms in the contract between employer &amp; employee It's where the office sits if you work from that location, or your actual place of work in case it differs from the office location Additionally, my contract states that the public holidays at the location of my office are to be used. But depending on the interpretation of that 'or' this clause could be invalid or the first source I've linked could be wrong. This is something that has to be discussed with a lawyer, though. This question is more about the interpretation of wording in German laws, I guess.
Where your office is, is your designated workspace. You get the public holidays wherever your official office address is. If you live and work in Hessia, then you get the 11 public holidays there. If you live in Hessia but work right over the border in Bavaria, you get 14 public holidays, even if you live in Hessia. Now, where do you work in case of remote work? That depends on what your official work address is. Do you connect remotely to an office in Bavaria where you are located on paper or do you have no such office? If you have an office you work at officially, then that is your agreed-upon, designated workplace, and in our example, if that's in Bavaria you get the 14 public holidays. If you don't are designated to work in an office in Bavaria and may log in remotely there, then your agreed-upon, designated workplace is your home address, and if that is in Hessia, you get the 11 public holidays there. Where your company's central is... Now, let's assume the company is seated in Brandenburg, which has 12 public holidays. That doesn't matter at all: the Feieratagsrecht of the place you work (officially) dictates your public holidays. So either the laws of your designated location apply: either Hessia's 11 public holidays if your home is the designated workplace, or Bavaria's 14 if the office you connect to is the designated workplace but you remote-connect to it. It would by the way matter if you are designated to be in a location for that exact day: you could be designated to work in a location that has no public holiday on that day, then you don't get that day. However, the Brandenburg company can decide to say &quot;You get our extra holidays in addition. Have fun with the extra free day&quot; - that'd be extra in the contract, not the legal requirement.
You probably would not be &quot;obligated&quot; to do anything. However your employer also would not be &quot;obligated&quot; to continue employment. If you agreed to something verbally, that is a contract. Verbal contracts can be difficult to enforce, but in this case the employer does not need to enforce it but rather take the easier solution of terminating your employment.
It depends to a large degree on local employment laws. Depending on how the counteroffer was worded, it might have constituted anything from a binding legal contract for employment for some reasonable minimum term, or a totally non-binding suggestion that was worth less than the air breathed while pronouncing it. Some things to consider would include: What are local employment laws like? Do they require that termination be for cause? If so, what are causes for termination? Does termination require any kind of remediation beforehand? Note that in an at-will, right-to-work state in the US, odds are that the employee can be fired for any time and for any reason, supposing the employer hasn't accidentally entered into a contract by extending the counteroffer. What did the counteroffer say? Did it stipulate that the offer was not for a definite term and that the company reserved the right to terminate the employee for any reason, or no reason at all? Odds are any sufficiently serious business in an at- will, right-to-work state would use standard legal language in any offer or counteroffer to ensure that they are on the right side of this, so odds are the counteroffer was accepted with no obligations at all on the company. Does the termination affect eligibility for unemployment benefits? I would say most likely not, as the termination would probably be recorded as being for no reason legally speaking (if they admitted to terminating the employee for seeking other employment, interested government officials could take a dim view of the company's actions). You'd probably have at least some unemployment compensation coming your way. Some professional - not legal - advice. Never accept a counteroffer. Only get another offer in the first place if you are committed to leaving your current employer no matter what. If your company really insists, you should insist on a minimum definite term of employment written into a legal contract which is signed by an executive and notarized. No company will agree to this (unless the term is shorter than you'd want as a full-time W-2 anyway) but if they do, hey, you have some security (if the company agrees to this, have your own lawyer - whom you pay with your own money - review the document). Even then, I would be very, very careful about staying at a company after getting a counteroffer. Don't do it. Ever. Never accept a counteroffer. One comment asks why I recommend never accepting a counteroffer. There are at least two reasons: The reason you are looking for a new job should be that there is something about your current job that isn't completely satisfactory and that you haven't been able to fix. Either you have grown out of the position, don't like the work, feel you're underpaid, don't get along with somebody, etc. If you were unable or unwilling to fix any of these issues without having another job on the table, having another job on the table shouldn't be what makes you willing and able to fix them. Why work somewhere that you'd constantly need to go job hunting to address workplace issues? Unless the company makes firm agreements about how long they're going to keep you around, you have no guarantee that they'll keep you. Presumably, you didn't have one before, and you don't have one at the new job, but the fact that you are currently employed might support the assumption that your employment would be continued at your current employer and the offer might support the assumption the new employer plans to employ you indefinitely. When you put in your notice, it makes the company more aware of the fact that you could leave at any time; while a perfectly rational actor would realize that this doesn't change the situation at all, companies are run by people and people often act irrationally. Perhaps your manager is vindictive, perhaps your manager is scared that you will still leave after accepting the counteroffer. Maybe your manager knows there are layoffs coming but needs you for the busy season. Hiring replacements can be time-consuming and expensive - and employees who are getting offers of employment elsewhere and putting in notice might be seen as risks. I'm not saying that accepting a counteroffer has always turned out badly. Falling coconuts kill 150 people every year. Still, I am not going to add a coconut rider to my insurance policy and I am not going to accept a counteroffer.
In general, in the US, Bob may do this. If the second company is a competitor of the first and Bob has access to confidential information from his first employer, then there could be an issue. Some employers require their employees, or some of them, to agree to &quot;exclusive employment&quot;, that is to agree not to accept any other employment while employed by the company. If Bob has agreed to such a contract, he would be in breach of it if he took a second job and could be fired if his main employer learns of this. This is not a problem if Bob gets permission for the vacation work from his usual employer. In any case, Bob is not committing a crime, even if he is violating his contract.
I can't find any law that would prevent an employer from requiring this. Under current Florida law, an employer can even demand passwords and access to an employee's social media accounts. A bill was proposed to prohibit this, but it hasn't passed. Generally, an employer can require anything they want as a condition of employment, as long as it is not illegal. Florida has at-will employment so the employer could certainly fire the employee if they don't comply.
Without commenting on the relatively strange situation itself, it is still useful to actually read what was actually said than what was described in a letter from a third person, even if the relayed information is technically true. The supposed basis for the claim of a zero salary is from an email allegedly sent by the department head (appendix 15): In short, you are not teaching in 2022/2023 and you have not submitted the required outline of your research or other engagement. I am very sorry that we cannot establish that you will be doing any work expected of a faculty member. Thus we cannot pay you. Starting with the Fall semester, your pay will be reduced to zero and you will be placed on unpaid personal leave. Essentially, the professor is being put on an unpaid leave because allegedly he is not doing any work. Consequently, minimum wage laws are not engaged even if the professor is not exempt as teachers since he is not being required to do any work. In the U.S., employers generally can do this (unless a work contract provides otherwise); in many circumstances, it is called being laid off (though the term has attracted a permanent connotation in parts of North America) or being suspended. An indefinite unpaid leave can be considered constructive dismissal if the employer does not reasonably allow the employee to return to work. It may not be constructive dismissal if the unpaid leave is prescribed by binding employer policies or because the employee refuses to work (and the employer allows the employment relationship to continue). Even if it is constructive dismissal, it is not automatically wrongful.
Can a district rescind an offer of employment? Yes. Any contractural offer can be withdrawn so long as it has not been accepted. You did not accept it, so the withdrawal is legal. Can they hire someone who is not qualified ... That depends on the particular law that mandates the qualification. As a general principle, anyone is allowed to work at anything unless there is a law that says “you cant do job X unless you have qualification/licence/accreditation/whatever Y.” So you need to actually read that law. Some allow a grace period for a person to do X while they get Y and some are outright prohibitions. And there are some things that people think require a specific qualification because everybody has one but there is actually no legal requirement. For example, I’m a qualified arbitrator, adjudicator and mediator. I need the qualification to work as the first one in australia and I it to work as the second in queensland but not new-south-wales but I don’t need it anywhere to work as the last one - most mediators have qualifications but they are not legally required. I am not a qualified lawyer because I don’t need to be to work as any of the above and, indeed, merely being a lawyer does not allow you to work as an arbitrator. … and rescind my offer of employment? The eligibility of the person they chose to hire has no bearing on their decision not to hire you. If they have hired an unqualified person then that is for the relevant regulator to deal with and has nothing to do with you. Are they not obligated to hire the most qualified applicant? No they are not. Employers have the discretion to choose the applicant they consider the “best”. And they can assess how your better qualifications weigh up against someone else’s past history with the organisation. Provided they do not consider things that they are not permitted to consider under discrimination law and that the process is not corrupt, they can weight the various factors how they wish. However, if an employer has stated that they will weight various applications is a specific way, then they have to do that.
The GDPR roughly applies in the following scenarios: Art 3(1): you have an establishment in Europe Art 3(2): you do not have an european establishment, but Art 3(2)(a): offer goods or services to persons in Europe Art 3(2)(b): monitor the behaviour of people who are in Europe (where Europe means EU/EEA/UK as appropriate). Art 3(1) does not seem to apply for you. Art 3(2)(a) does not apply, since you're not actively targeting people in Europe. At the point in time where you are offering the app to users, those users are in the US. Art 3(2)(b) could apply if you collect some kind of tracking data, in particular (but not limited to) location data. But if you temporarily shut down collection of new data for personalisation while the user is in Europe, that's probably going to be reasonably safe. It might not be necessary to disable ad personalisation if that personalisation is based on data collected outside of Europe. In practice, unless your app is specifically targeted at travellers, no one will care about what your app does outside of the US. For detailed guidelines on the territorial scope of the GDPR, consider reading EDPB guidelines 3/2018 (PDF). The document contains some relevant examples, but since it's official guidance they won't explicitly say that GDPR won't apply in a scenario like yours. The closest is Example 8: An Australian company offers a mobile news and video content service, based on users’ preferences and interest. Users can receive daily or weekly updates. The service is offered exclusively to users located in Australia, who must provide an Australian phone number when subscribing. An Australian subscriber of the service travels to Germany on holiday and continues using the service. Although the Australian subscriber will be using the service while in the EU, the service is not ‘targeting’ individuals in the Union, but targets only individuals in Australia, and so the processing of personal data by the Australian company does not fall within the scope of the GDPR. Also relevant is Example 10, which says that app downloads in the EU might not be subject to GDPR: A U.S. citizen is travelling through Europe during his holidays. While in Europe, he downloads and uses a news app that is offered by a U.S. company. The app is exclusively directed at the U.S. market, evident by the app terms of use and the indication of US Dollar as the sole currency available for payment. The collection of the U.S. tourist's personal data via the app by the U.S. company is not subject to the GDPR.