In times of home office and remote work, trade unions are looking for new ways to connect with employees, inform their members, and recruit new members. In a landmark decision (judgment of January 28, 2025 – 1 AZR 33/24), the Federal Labor Court (BAG) clarified that employers are not obliged to disclose their employees' work email addresses to trade unions for the purpose of recruiting and informing members. The union is also not entitled to access the group-wide intranet or to have a link to the union's website on the intranet's home page.
In this specific case, the union responsible for collective bargaining demanded access to all work email addresses of employees who worked from home several days a week, as well as access to internal company portals. The Federal Labor Court rejected this request, citing the conflicting constitutional rights of the union, employer, and employees.
In the opinion of the Federal Labor Court, the digital access right demanded by the union cannot be based solely on freedom of association, as it conflicts with the employer's freedom of economic activity and the employees' right to informational self-determination. Rather, the legislature must take action in this area. For the public sector, Section 9 (3) sentence 2 BPersVG already stipulates that the employer is obliged to link to the union's website on its intranet at the union's request. It remains to be seen whether the legislature will also specify the digital access rights of trade unions for private employers. In any case, this is provided for in the current coalition agreement (“We are supplementing the trade unions' right of access to companies with digital access that corresponds to their analog rights”).