AK helped woman

No allowance for disgusting activities: Back payment

(Bild: stock.adobe.com - pixel-shot.com (Leonid Yastremskiy))

Employees are entitled to a dirt, hardship and danger allowance (SEG allowance) for work carried out under difficult conditions, provided this is provided for in the collective agreement. An employee from Linz, who had to clean up excrement, among other things, was denied these allowances. With the help of the AK, she received a back payment.

For eight years, an employee from Linz supported elderly people and people in need of care in their homes as a home service worker. She helped her clients with shopping, laundry and, among other things, tidying, cleaning and deep-cleaning their homes. For the latter, she often had to wipe up and dispose of excrement. This was not a problem for her because she saw it as a normal part of her job. According to the Social Economy Austria collective agreement, she was entitled to an SEG allowance for this. 

"It can always happen that companies overlook something or deliberately don't pay claims. It is better to have the payroll checked than to leave claims unpaid."

Andreas Stangl

Bild: Alexander Schwarzl

Error noticed when checking the final payroll
After the employee had resigned from her job, she had the final statement checked by the AK in Linz. It turned out that the former employer had not accounted for and paid out the bonuses to which she was entitled. The AK intervened and was quickly successful: the woman was paid 1.44 euros gross per hour worked under difficult conditions and a total of more than 1120 euros.