In Austria, film production is a free trade which must be registered with Austrian trade authorities. Production work which lasts three days or less is not subject to trade ordinances. Work activities which last longer than three days must be registered with the authorities.
EEA production companies (companies with headquarters in an EEA country) may carry out their production activities in Austria as long as they are entitled to do so in their home country.
Trade activities and an Austrian subsidiary (if the latter results from trade activities, according to Austrian trade laws), automatically entail a membership in the Association of the Audiovisual and Film Industry, the Austrian film producers guild. Membership makes all employee contracts signed by the member company subject to the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). In Austria, film industry employees either are covered by the CBA for Filmmakers or the CBA for Non-Filmmakers.
In contrast to employees, free service employees do their work independently, i.e. predominantly without instructions from the employer and without being bound to a specific workplace. Neither employees nor free service employees are liable for the success of the venture, they merely have to be available to work for the employer for a specific time period.
Austrian Social Security Law (which includes health, accident, and pension insurance) makes further distinctions within the group of free servce employees:
- “employee-similar” free service employees and
- entrepreneurial free service employees (“new independents”)
The first subgroup is subject to madatory complete insurance coverage by the employer (Art. 4 Par 4 of the ASVG, the General Austrian Social Security Law), the second subgroup is subject to be insured under the GSVG (the Austrian Social Security Law for Independent Trade).
Persons whose total wages from employment and free service contracts do not exceed the “petty limit” (€ 376.26 gross per month), are deemed minimally employed and therefore not included in the madatory complete insurance coverage; the employer simply has to pay for accident insurance.