According to German law, every employee has the right to object to the transfer of their employment relationship to the transferee in the case of a transfer of business. However, the right to object is not unlimited. The Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht (‘BAG’)) held that an employee who had worked for the transferee for seven years had lost this right if they had been informed about the transfer.

For the fourth time in seven years, an Austrian court has asked the ECJ for guidance on the subject of age discrimination in pay scales. In this latest case, the period required to progress from step 1 to step 2 on the pay scale was longer than the period needed to progress from step 2 to step 3 and beyond. Does that constitute age discrimination? The author argues that it does, and that the arguments advanced to justify it are not valid.