Equal treatment law and anti-discrimination

We expand our field of legal advice

Until the 1970s, women in Austria were only allowed to go to work and earn their own money with their husband's consent. Such provisions are unimaginable today, just a few decades later. But even in the present day, many forms of unequal treatment and discrimination against people for a wide variety of reasons still exist.

We at BLS Attorneys at Law now offer equal treatment law as a new area of consulting. The law protects people in the workplace against discrimination on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, religion or belief, age and sexual orientation. The first legal provisions came into being in Austria in 1979 and were intended to prevent wage inequalities between men and women. In the following decades, the protection against discrimination was extended several times and in 2004, with the federal act on equal treatment (Bundesgesetz über die Gleichbehandlung), it was extended to other areas of life, such as access to goods, services and housing. In the meantime, further legal basics exist, including equal treatment laws of the individual federal states and laws for the protection of people with disabilities.

Our partner Wolfgang Schubert and attorney at law Elisabeth Wurzinger-Malburg advise on all issues relating to equal treatment and anti-discrimination. For example, we support companies as employers in the equal treatment of their employees in all phases of the employment relationship and in the formulation of discrimination-free general terms and conditions and insurance conditions. We represent in association proceedings, in proceedings before the Equal Treatment Commission, in civil proceedings for violation of the prohibition of discrimination and in criminal proceedings under the statute on responsibility of legal entities (Verbandsverantwortlichkeitsgesetz).

To the new practice area >> Equal treatment law and anti-discrimination