Court case VDS00089378 – Court Ruling (Slovenia, 2025)

A trade union requested that an employer provide a detailed list of the 200 highest gross salaries paid in April 2024, broken down by salary components, including organisational unit, service, department, and job code. The request was made in the context of a collective labour dispute and was justified by the trade union on the basis of a collective agreement and its role in protecting workers’ interests. The employer refused to disclose the requested data. The court of first instance rejected the trade union’s request, finding that the disclosure of such personal data lacked a sufficient legal basis, and ordered the trade union to reimburse the employer’s procedural costs. The trade union appealed, arguing that public-sector salaries are public under national law, which obliges employers to provide trade unions with data necessary for the performance of trade union activities. The court dismissed the appeal and upheld the judgment of the court of first instance. First, the court held that the collective agreement relied upon by the trade union does not constitute a law and therefore cannot serve as a legal basis for the disclosure of personal data, as required by Article 6(2) of the Personal Data Protection Act (ZVOP-2), implementing Article 6 and 9 GDPR. Although public-sector salaries are public under national law, the court clarified that this does not entitle a trade union to obtain individual salary data within a collective labour dispute. Access to such information must be sought before the competent authority, and not before a labour court. The court additionally found that the national legislation invoked is not sufficiently specific, on its own, to justify the disclosure of detailed personal salary data. In line with the principle of data minimisation under Article 5(1)(c) GDPR, the trade union would have had to demonstrate concretely why the requested data were necessary for specific trade union activities, which it failed to do. General claims about mo