About Arbeit und Arbeitsrecht

Arbeit und Arbeitsrecht

Arbeit und Arbeitsrecht (AuA) — subtitled "Personal, Praxis, Recht" — is the German specialist journal for human-resources management and labour law, published monthly in Berlin by HUSS-MEDIEN. Now in its 81st volume, it serves as the practice-oriented guide for modern personnel work, addressing HR professionals and managers: personnel directors and officers, managing directors, works-council members and the employment-law specialists in companies. Each monthly issue plus an annual special edition combines new HR trends with comprehensive information on current case law and new regulations, company-practice experience, and working aids — checklists, model clauses, practical tips. Few German trade journals carry a history as politically charged as AuA's: founded in 1946 as an official organ of the Soviet Occupation Zone's labour administration, it became the GDR's labour-law journal before reinventing itself after reunification as the unified Germany's HR practitioners' magazine.

Overview

German employment relationships operate within one of the world's most elaborate labour-law frameworks: dismissal protection, works-constitution law, collective-bargaining regimes, working-time regulation, and a dense body of case law from the labour courts up to the Federal Labour Court and the European Court of Justice. For the HR professionals who must apply this framework daily — hiring, managing, restructuring, compensating, and where necessary dismissing employees — current, practical information is a professional necessity. AuA addresses this need with a program built around four topic fields: Arbeitsrecht (labour law), Personalpraxis (HR practice), Recruiting and Vergütung (compensation).

The editorial concept connects HR trends with legal substance. Labour-law coverage tracks legislation and the current case law of the labour, social and fiscal courts — the decisions that determine what HR practice may and must do. HR-practice coverage addresses the management side: recruiting strategies, leadership, organizational development, and the New Work debates reshaping the world of work. Compensation coverage follows pay systems, benefits and the remuneration questions that preoccupy both employers and employees. Throughout, the journal emphasizes working aids: checklists, model contracts, company agreements and practical tips that translate legal requirements into operational tools. The cross-media offering extends the monthly print issues into a digital platform with premium content, the online archive, the weekly "Weekly Briefing" newsletter, the AuA magazine app with e-paper editions, the "Arbeitsrecht kommentiert" app with over 900 practice commentaries on employment-law decisions, online seminars, and the annual Kongress Arbeitsrecht in Berlin — the industry's congress.

History

On March 1, 1946, the journal's first volume appeared under the name Arbeit und Sozialfürsorge — as the official organ of the Central Administration for Labour and Social Welfare in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany, published by the VEB Deutscher Zentralverlag with the approval of the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD). In 1959 its scope expanded to questions of labour, occupational safety, labour law and social welfare; from 1960 it carried the subtitle "journal for all questions of socialist labour and social welfare" and appeared in the Verlag Die Wirtschaft. In 1962 the journal Arbeitsrecht was merged into it, and in 1963 it received its still-current title Arbeit und Arbeitsrecht — then with the subtitle "journal for socialist labour and labour law." For the GDR's remaining decades, it was the socialist state's labour-law journal, addressing the personnel and legal functionaries of the planned economy.

Reunification brought the journal's reinvention. From issue 7/1990, Arbeit und Arbeitsrecht was co-published by the East German Verlag Die Wirtschaft and the West German C.H. Beck — the first East-West publisher cooperation in the field of labour law — appearing with the subtitle "monthly for company practice." In 1991 the two publishers founded the Arbeit und Arbeitsrecht – AuA GmbH. In September 1991, the Munich publisher Wolfgang Huss acquired from the Treuhandanstalt the ReWi Verlag für Recht und Wirtschaft (formerly the GDR's State Publishing House), the Verlag Die Wirtschaft, the Verlag für Bauwesen and the Verlag Technik — bringing the journal into the Huss publishing group. Since 1996 it has appeared in the Verlag Die Wirtschaft GmbH (today HUSS-MEDIEN), and since 1998 — on the initiative of Wolfgang Hromadka and Rainer Sieg — it has been supported by a Publizistischer Beirat (publishing advisory board) of company practitioners, academics, federal judges and representatives of the Federal Labour Ministry (BMAS). The journal thus completed a remarkable journey: from SMAD-approved official organ to the independent practitioners' journal of the reunified republic's HR profession, now in its 81st year.

Coverage and Content

Each monthly issue's program follows the HR professional's agenda. The labour-law reporting covers the current case law of the Federal Labour Court and the lower courts, new legislation and EU developments — always translated into practice: what the decision means for employment contracts, dismissals, works-council relations and day-to-day HR work. The social-security-law dimension addresses the contribution and benefit questions intertwined with employment. HR-practice features report company experience: successful models of personnel leadership, new organizational approaches, and the practice examples of leading companies that give readers adaptable templates.

Recruiting coverage addresses the skilled-worker shortage's central challenge: employer branding, selection procedures, and the legal framework of hiring. Compensation coverage follows pay-system design, variable compensation, and benefits. The working aids are the journal's signature utility: checklists for legally sensitive processes (from hiring to dismissal), model clauses and contracts, company-agreement templates, and the practical tips that compress legal complexity into operational steps. The annual special edition (Themendossier) treats a focus topic in depth, while the congress, webinars and book program extend the brand into events and reference works. The BVAU — the Federal Association of Employment Lawyers in Companies, founded 2013 in Heidelberg — counts the journal as a strategic partner, reflecting its standing among the profession's specialists.

Organization and Ownership

Arbeit und Arbeitsrecht is published by the HUSS-MEDIEN GmbH of Berlin, part of the Munich-based HUSS publishing group founded by Wolfgang Huss — one of Germany's leading specialist publishers for transport, logistics, tourism and professional information. The editorial team is led by editor-in-chief Volker Hassel, working with specialist editors and a network of authors drawn from practice: employment lawyers, HR managers, academics and judges. The Publizistischer Beirat — company practitioners, scholars, federal judges and BMAS representatives — secures the journal's practice relevance and independence.

Commercially, the journal follows the professional-press model: subscriptions (the AuA and AuA-Plus tiers, print and digital), the online archive and Genios licensing, the congress and seminar business, and advertising from the HR industry's suppliers — HR software providers, law firms, training companies, background-check and recruiting services — for whom the concentrated HR-decision-maker readership is the key audience. The subscription package illustrates the cross-media strategy: twelve print issues, the annual dossier, the online archive, the "Arbeitsrecht kommentiert" app flat rate, the AuA magazine app with e-paper, the weekly newsletter, a free annual online seminar, training discounts and the congress ticket discount — a complete professional-information system rather than a magazine alone.

Digital Presence

The journal's digital home is arbeit-und-arbeitsrecht.de, the specialist portal carrying current headlines, the verdict ticker, commentaries, templates, checklists and FAQ answers — the daily news flow between the monthly print issues. The online archive reaches back to 2000, giving subscribers a quarter-century of searchable HR and labour-law knowledge, supplemented by the Genios online archive's thousands of articles. The AuA magazine app delivers the issues as e-paper for tablet, smartphone and PC, while the "Arbeitsrecht kommentiert" app provides the 900-plus practice commentaries on employment-law decisions for mobile reference.

The weekly "Weekly Briefing" newsletter delivers the news selection to the HR profession's inboxes, and the online seminars extend the training function into live digital formats. The annual Kongress Arbeitsrecht in Berlin — with its subscriber ticket discount — anchors the brand in the profession's physical gathering. On social media, the journal maintains channels for news distribution and professional debate. After 80 years — from the Soviet Zone's official organ through the GDR's labour-law journal to the reunified republic's HR practitioners' medium — Arbeit und Arbeitsrecht operates as the German HR profession's cross-media information system: monthly in print for the curated professional reading, daily online for the news and verdict flow, and annually at the Berlin congress where the profession meets.