:-( - Smiley not allowed on list for works council election
A list of candidates for a works council election with a smiley face is invalid. This was decided by the Cologne Regional Labor Court on Friday. At a works council election in a logistics company, an election committee had rejected a list with the pictogram, which in turn was contested by five employees of the company.
According to the court, the pictogram is inadmissible if - like a smiley - it merely expresses a mood or emotional state, has no clear word replacement function and is therefore not usually pronounced.
Employees had initially submitted an election proposal with the name "fair.die". This was rejected by the election committee due to the risk of confusion with the trade union verdi, as were "Fair :-) die Liste" and other proposals with smileys. As the court has now ruled, rightly so. The election board ultimately used the names of the first candidates on the list as the password.
However, the company election was declared invalid for other reasons: the election committee had inadmissibly ordered a general postal vote for a plant in Troisdorf despite its proximity to the main plant at Cologne/Bonn Airport, as the court stated.
The decision by the Cologne Regional Labor Court also stated that work-related judgments should consider the admissibility of graphs or pictograms in election lists, as simple emoticons like smileys might not serve a clear word replacement function and can be seen as expressing mood or emotional states. Furthermore, the administrators of future works council elections should be cautious when rejecting proposals with smileys, as the court's ruling now sets a precedent for similar cases.
Source: www.dpa.com
