From Day-One Doctor’s Notes to VW Crisis: German Employee Reps Face a Squeeze from All Sides

Germany’s works councils and disability representatives are scrambling to keep pace with a pile-up of legal changes, court rulings and industrial turmoil that is testing their capacity like never before. The most imminent shift: the black-red coalition’s plan to make a sick note mandatory from the first day of illness and to scrap the phone-based sick leave option that became common during the pandemic.

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That proposal, which the coalition says is meant to curb absenteeism, has drawn sharp criticism from the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung) and opposition parties. Experts are already advising works councils to watch the legislative process closely, because company-level exceptions to the rule could be negotiated through co-determination – a potential new bargaining front.

The planned change comes as the Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht) has tightened formal requirements in two important rulings from the first half of 2026. A decision on 28 January (case reference 7 ABR 26/24) clarified that while an election challenge sent by email-to-fax is procedurally valid, a missing power of attorney cannot be supplied retroactively once the two-week challenge period has expired. A separate judgment on 15 April (7 AZR 114/25) dealt with pay for works council members: to claim a higher salary, the member must now prove a concrete hypothetical position existed – merely showing potential is not enough. Mandate-holders are being told to prepare far more detailed justifications and benchmark calculations.

Meanwhile, the burden on disability representatives (Schwerbehindertenvertretungen, SBV) is growing as application backlogs stretch. At the end of 2025, roughly 7.8 million people in Germany – 9.4 percent of the population – were registered as severely disabled, with 91 percent of disabilities stemming from illness. Processing times for recognition applications vary widely by region. Saxony-Anhalt cut its average to 6.5 months since January 2026, but other states like Saxony are seeing waits lengthen, driven by rising application numbers, staff shortages and slow digitisation in public administrations. The SBV faces rising consultation demands, and basic training for new members is in high demand.

On the industry side, the works council at Volkswagen is entering high-stakes negotiations over potential plant closures and job cuts. Sites including Hannover, Osnabrück and Emden could be affected. A particular flashpoint is the company leadership’s lack of communication about capacity planning beyond the early 2030s, a point of severe criticism from employee representatives.

In retail and services, tensions remain high. Collective bargaining has been suspended in several federal states because of disagreements over wage increases and contract durations. Strikes and rallies – including at the cinema chain Cinemaxx – underline the pressure on employee bodies to find workable solutions in an era of intense work density.

To help representatives cope, training providers have been expanding their offerings since mid-July 2026, with modules ranging from basic legal principles to specific negotiation topics. Seminar locations include Hannover, Münster, Braunschweig and Osnabrück, supplemented by online formats. Focus areas include co-determination rights on holiday scheduling under the Works Constitution Act (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) – where the council has a say in principles and the holiday list, but the employer alone decides the duration of leave – as well as IT co-determination and European labour law, preparing committees for digitalisation and internationalisation. Mediation, conflict resolution and the drafting of company agreements are also core topics.

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