Posting of workers platform

What documents have to be available, who has to keep them available and where?

The documents listed below are required to be kept available at the place in Austria where the posted or temporary agency worker is employed:

  • the A1 social security document or, by way of exception, equivalent documents in German – refer to Registration for social insurance
     
  • Copy of the notice for the posting of workers – refer to menu item Notification requirements
     
  • Pay documents that show at a minimum the amount of remuneration due and actually paid out to the employee during the assignment in Austria.

    The pay documents include:
    • Employment contract or written record of the content of the employment contract in accordance with Information Directive 91/533/EEC
    • Payslip, proof of payment by the employer or bank transfer statements
    • Wage records and
    • documents relating to pay categorisation (e.g. education or training and earlier employment periods, if stipulated as significant in the collective agreement).

Wage records are documents intended to clearly show the methods and bases for calculating remuneration and the items it consists of.
Examples of wage records include payroll slips, payroll lists, wage tax cards, notices of the beginning and end of health insurance, lists of allowances and supplements paid, and records of overtime hours worked, commissions, piece-work or other items used to determine performance-based pay.

Pay documents must be available in German or in German translation. The employment contract may be kept available in English.

  • Where the employee is to be posted from an EU Member State  but himself/herself is not a citizen of an EU Member States:
    Employment permit of the posting country – refer to menu item Employment permit
     
  • Records of the hours worked for each posted employee.

Who has to keep the documents available and in what form?

The obligation to keep the documents available at the place of work or employment applies to

  • the employer of the posting undertaking in the case of posting;
  • the user undertaking in Austria when workers are hired out temporarily on a cross-border basis.

    The temporary work agency must demonstrably make the documents available to the user undertaking.
     
  • The obligation to keep the documents available applies to the user undertaking, where the worker is hired out by a user undertaking to whom that worker was previously hired out in another country.

The employer and the user undertaking can use third parties to meet the obligations to keep documents available. An example is when one of the employees posted by the employer, which for practical reasons could be the contact person, is able to make the documents available at the place of employment at any time, in this way fulfilling the employer’s obligation. Yet the employer remains directly under obligation here and is nonetheless liable to a fine in the event of any breach of the obligation to keep records available.

The documents are to be made available to inspection authorities either in printed form or as readable electronic documents.

Where it is unfeasible or inadvisable to keep the documents available at the place of employment, the alternative place (designation and address) where they will be kept available is required to be disclosed in advance when notice is submitted.

That alternative place can:

  • in the case of posting, be either with a contact person outside of the place of work (employee of the posting employer or professional legal representative)
  • or with a chartered accountant, lawyer or notary public (professional legal representative) established in Austria
  • or at a branch in Austria
  • or at an Austrian subsidiary or parent company of the same company group.

Special regulations apply when posting out mobile workers in the transport sector (siehe "LSD-BG - Aktuelles zum Transportbereich").

When do the documents have to be kept available?

The documents have to be kept available or be accessible in electronic form, beginning from when work first starts and for the entire posting or hiring-out period.
The pay documents and the records of hours worked have to continue to be available after individual posted or hired-out workers have already stopped working but other workers are still employed.

Employers or user undertakings not ensuring the physical availability of these documents or the availability in electronic form face an administrative penalty (fine).
Especially the failure to keep the pay documents available is subject to heavy fines of up to EUR 20,000 or, in cases of repeated offence, up to EUR 50,000.