Court case Sa 11/18 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2018)

The plaintiff was employed by an international group as head of the “Legal Mergers & Acquisitions”. A longstanding labour dispute began between the plaintiff and his employer. As a result, the plaintiff was assigned to various positions having a lower hierarchy and lower wage level. During the conflict, the plaintiff received several warnings from its employer for improperly fulfilling his work and was finally dismissed. In the context of this dispute, the plaintiff requested access to personal data under Article 15 GDPR. The right to access relates, among other things, to any correspondence about the plaintiff in parallel with the personnel file, and the inclusion of the plaintiff in internal 'negative lists'. This is of importance because a Business Practices Office (BPO) proceeding against the plaintiff was initiated in 2014 - it equals a whistle blower system. In an email from the head of HR to the plaintiff on March 8, 2017, the plaintiff was informed that a compliance check was planned for all (job) appointments in the legal area, which would also check whether a BPO Proceedings result in a violation of the rules. However, the first instance rejected the right of the plaintiff to claim information about the personal performance and the behavioural data processed by the employer, which was not stored in the personnel file. The employer refused to communicate this information because of third-parties interests, namely business secrets. The Land court confirmed that Article 15 GDPR also exists in an employment law relationship, and a Member State is authorized to issue specific national regulations on employee data within certain limits. According to the GDPR, personal data is all information that relates to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'), and, in an employment relationship, the employer inevitably processes personal data of its employees. It has been judged that the plaintiff is entitled to information about personal perform