Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mithaldu | Hacker News Reader

Well, i don't know the exact details. What i do know is, he is getting paid, but his employer (telekom support call center) is still needling him to provide information on when he'd be back and how he's feeling about his health.

Maybe it's an oddity of MeckPomm, or something specific about cancer that allows this.

Can you provide an explanation as to why they'd be still on his case if he's not costing them anything?

View on HN

> Can you provide an explanation as to why they'd be still on his case if he's not costing them anything?

Staffing. He's still employed even if they're not paying him. That means that they need to take him into account when making new hires. If he suddenly returns after they've hired a de-facto replacement, they now have 1 extra employee.

This sounds the most reasonable explanation, yeah.

They might be asking for things that they're not really eligible to know, or fishing for a pretext to get rid of him. Employment courts in Germany are very employee-friendly, and most cases (90+ %) are settled. Lawyer fees are strictly based on the value of the case (i.e. how much money/compensation the case is about), and each party has to pay for their own lawyer no matter what the verdict is (a rule to financially protect the more vulnerable employee from being financially ruined by the large corporation with expensive lawyers), so the financial risk for firing someone which is then eventually judged to have been done illegally is relatively limited and financially very predictable.

But the rules regarding long-term sickness are clear: the employee only has to send them the renewed sick notes, that's it.

I think doktrin makes a better point, but this is information that is good to know too. I have edited the post above to point out that this stuff should be read too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com