The European Court of Justice has held that no matter how long an employee is on sick leave, the employee is entitled to holiday time, reports the Solicitors Journal:

The Dusseldorf employment tribunal and the House of Lords had both referred cases to the European Court for a preliminary ruling on the working time regulations.

Giving judgment in Schultz-Hoff v Deutshche Rentenversicherung Bund (C-350/06) and Stringer and others v HMRC (C-520/06) the Grand Chamber of the ECJ ruled that sick workers continue to accrue to holiday even if they are away from work for the entire year.

I wondered what the Düsseldorf employment tribunal (lower-case) was meant to be. In England and Wales, there are a large number of tribunals, ranging from ones similar to courts, such as the employment tribunal, to ones with much less room for appeal and legal rights. I would be inclined to translate employment tribunal into German as Arbeitsgericht.

What about the translation Arbeitsgericht: labour court, recommended by the German Foreign Office?

Labour is recommended in order to cover both individual and collective employment law. But employment court would be OK for me too. I would avoid using the term tribunal when translating a Gericht, because it suggests something less than a court. Still, this is a comprehensive translation of the court of first instance.

But apparently this was the next instance:

REFERENCES for a preliminary ruling under Article 234 EC from the Landesarbeitsgericht Düsseldorf (Germany) (C-350/06) and the House of Lords (United Kingdom) (C‑520/06), made by decisions of 2 August and 13 December 2006, received at the Court on 21 August and 20 December 2006 respectively, in the proceedings…

Well, I suppose at least it doesn’t matter much to the case in hand, as far as the House of Lords is concerned.