Employment contracts

An employment contract does not necessarily have to be set down in writing, but the employer is legally obliged to set down the essential contractual conditions in writing, sign them and hand them over to the employee no later than one month after the agreed commencement of the employment relationship.

The contract must contain the following information:

1. The names and addresses of both parties to the contract
2. The beginning date and duration of your employment
3. The type of work and a brief description of your duties
4. The workplace location (or a specification that you can be assigned to work at different locations)
5. The amount of your wage or salary (usually your gross pay), including allowances, bonuses, premiums and special payments as well as other components of your gross pay and a specification of when these components are due
6. The number of hours you are expected to work in accordance with the contract
7. Your leave entitlement
8. Notice periods for termination of employment
9. References to applicable collective bargaining agreements and company or service agreements which apply to the employment relationship

Your employment relationship may be limited or unlimited in time. If you have concluded a limited-time employment contract, you will not receive a notice of termination at a specified point in time; instead, your employment relationship will end automatically on the specified date of expiration. This is known as limited-time employment, because the contract expires on a certain date. We also refer to it as a fixed-term employment contract.

Employers are permitted by law to limit the term of an employment contract to a period of up to two years without specification of cause. Such fixed-term employment contracts may also be extended up to three times within the total two-year period.

Limited-time employment is not permissible in cases in which an employee has previously worked for a given employer under a fixed-term or unlimited-term employment contract.

Fixed-term employment contracts must always be concluded in writing. If a term-limitation agreement is not concluded in written form (but rather in electronic form or under notarial supervision), only the term limitation, and not the entire employment contract, is regarded as null and void. Thus the employment contract as such is valid, namely as an unlimited-term contract.

Further information on this topic is provided at:

DGB Sachsen