In Denmark you’re by law entitled to 5 weeks of fully paid vacation when working full time. For the most part this is pretty straight forward. However, if part of your pay is commission based, this is a little more tricky.
For simplicity I have a base pay of 20.000 DKK and commission of 20.000 DKK on an average month, equaling 40.000 DKK.
However, during vacation time, we were only being paid our base pay, and no compensation for the lost commission due to being away on vacation.
For those of you thinking “this is not a big deal” – if you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you literally cannot afford to take vacation, due to missing out on the commission. Not a single soul would want to work here, if it wasn’t for the commission.
Last year a ruling in one of Denmarks courts set the precedent that commission based workers were indeed entitled to compensation for the missed commission due to either being on vacation, sick or being fired.
I made my coworkers aware of this ruling as I thought most would appreciate the fact that they possibly had what amassed to months of pay due.
Well you guessed it, management found out, and I was pulled aside, and I was just expelled (fired without warning, and without severance pay, and escorted out of the building). Up until this point I was one of the top performers in both sales, and customer satisfaction, as well as being up for a promotion.
Good thing I’m good at my job and won’t have much trouble finding a new one, but holy shit, didn’t think this of the biggest ISP in the country, with a net profit of 3 billion, but hey, rather lose good employees than live up to the minimum law 🤷️