Collective access to national courts for labour law and social policy disputes: Austria

Abstract

With this paper we aimed to give an insight into Austria's labour and social security jurisdiction, notably into different forms of collective redress within this system. As the Austrian Labour and Social Courts Act provides for certain instruments of collective redress, the primary focus will be on those. The main drawback of those existing forms of collective action for labour law matters, however, is the lacking possibility for the single employee to enforce the respective judgement. Hence it can only serve as a legal test case. In that respect, instruments of Austria's general civil procedural law could present a practical alternative to the problem and thus the legal framework and ongoing academic debate about the application of those procedures is also a key part of the paper.