Recovery of Corona bonus not legal
In a ruling dated May 15, 2021 (Case No. 6 Ca 141/21), the Oldenburg Labor Court ruled at first instance that "Corona bonus payments paid voluntarily cannot be reclaimed." Nor is repayment to be considered if "the employee terminates the employment relationship after payment of the bonus." A repayment clause agreed in the employment contract may not prevent this.
Many workers received a Corona bonus in 2020
If a company has voluntarily paid its employees a corona bonus, it cannot reclaim such a bonus. This also applies if an employee resigns of his or her own accord, even if an extra repayment clause is in place.
The decisive case was that of an educator from Cloppenburg who was planning to change his job and, upon giving notice, found that the Corona bonus he had already received from his employer had been deducted. A separate clause to the contractually stipulated bonus payment stated that "an employee who resigns for his own reasons twelve months after receiving a voluntary special payment must repay the bonus in full."
The Oldenburg Labor Court reasoned that such repayment clauses were inadmissible on two counts. Firstly, in accordance with the case law of the German Federal Labor Court (BAG), they are inappropriate if they provide for the employee to be bound to the company beyond the following quarter. Secondly, the original idea behind the corona bonus when it was introduced was to reward work already performed that was required to a greater extent during corona periods. Special "burdens during the pandemic" were to be recognized and compensated, which thus also referred to "a period already in the past". A repayment clause was therefore also inadmissible.
It was also argued that the corona bonus is in itself completely unsuitable for rewarding company loyalty in general. If only company loyalty is to receive a kind of bonus, a separate allowance should be considered, not the corona bonus.
