Federal Conciliation Board declares Red Cross collective agreement to be a statute

The Federal Conciliation Office (Bundeseinigungsamt) at the Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection declared the 2026 collective agreement of the Austrian Red Cross to be a statute by decree on October 6, 2026. The regulation was promulgated on October 7, 2026, in the Federal Law Gazette for the Republic of Austria, Part II, under the number BGBl. II No. 293/2026. Consequently, the remuneration and working conditions of the Red Cross are legally bindingly extended to all providers of rescue and patient transport services throughout Austria.

The legal basis for the decision is § 18 Para. 1 of the Labour Constitution Act (Arbeitsverfassungsgesetz), BGBl. No. 22/1974. According to this, the Federal Conciliation Office may, upon application by a body capable of entering into a collective agreement that is a party to a collective agreement, grant that collective agreement legally binding effect outside its spatial, professional, and personal scope of application by declaring it a statute. The decree of October 6, 2026, was preceded by a senate hearing.

The entire collective agreement was concluded between the Austrian Red Cross and the Austrian Trade Union Federation, the GPA Union, and the VIDA Union. It is deposited with the Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection under a registration number and was promulgated on August 4, 2026, on the federal announcement and information platform.

Scope of Application: Austria-wide for Rescue and Patient Transport

The statute defines its scope of application in § 1 across three dimensions:

• Professional: for providers of rescue and patient transport services, excluding mountain, water, cave, and air rescue, as well as rescue dog squads.
• Spatial: for the Republic of Austria.
• Personal: for all employers within the professional scope of application, as well as the employees and apprentices employed by them, provided their employment relationships are not covered by a valid collective agreement; collective agreements pursuant to § 18 Para. 4 ArbVG are excluded.

Exceptions and State-Specific Appendices

Pursuant to § 2 Para. 2, those provisions of the collective agreement relating to professional areas outside the professional scope of application described in § 1 lit. a are excluded from the statutory declaration. Additionally, the regulation explicitly names excluded individual provisions:

• § 1, § 2, § 38b, and § 47 of the collective agreement.
• Annex B: § 1 second paragraph.

The state-specific appendices contained in the collective agreement are declared to be statutes for the respective state listed therein, also with exceptions for provisions outside the professional scope of application. Furthermore, individual points of the appendices for the states of Lower Austria (Pt. 7), Salzburg, and Tyrol (Part A and Part B, individual points in each case) are excluded.

Effectiveness as of September 1, 2026

According to § 3 of the regulation, the effective date of the statutes is set as September 1, 2026. The period of validity of the statutes is based on the period of validity of the statutory collective agreement; it therefore ends upon the expiration thereof. The regulation is signed by Neubauer.

For the industry, the statutes mean that private providers of rescue and patient transport services must in future remunerate their employees according to the same collective agreement minimum conditions as the Austrian Red Cross. Employees and apprentices of these providers will thus receive a nationwide uniform, enforceable minimum framework for the first time, while competition based on lower wages and working hours within the professional scope of application can no longer continue.

Source: Federal Law Gazette for the Republic of Austria, BGBl. II No. 293/2026 of October 7, 2026, Part II, Regulation (official reference: BGBl. II No. 293/2026).