Bildungsteilzeit, Elternteilzeit, Pflegeteilzeit and
Wiedereingliederungsteilzeit were offered as kinds of long-term absence.
Recorded that way, the person counted as absent: they dropped out of
headcount, their reporting line fell to a stand-in, and reports stopped
counting them — while they were in the building every week, just for
fewer hours. A part-time arrangement is not an absence; it is a change
of hours.
They now sit where they belong. Wiedereingliederungs- and Elternteilzeit
appear when recording a return from absence, as the reason someone comes
back on reduced hours — both typically begin exactly when the absence
ends. Bildungs- and Pflegeteilzeit appear under "Daten ändern" beside
the hours, next to the ordinary contractual change.
The reason is recorded with the change, not as a state on the person. A
state would have to be maintained, and nobody goes back to note when a
Bildungsteilzeit ended; a field that quietly goes stale is worse than
none. In the history it stands next to the value it explains, and stays
readable for good.
The check constraint on absence_type is deliberately untouched. Three
people carry the old values right now — two Pflegeteilzeit, one
Wiedereingliederungsteilzeit. Forbidding them would make existing rows
illegal. They are gone from the list of choices; the history stays
readable. Those three are worth revisiting, but that is a data decision,
not a code one.
Rehearsed against real data: an hours change with a reason and one
without, a reduced return with a reason and an unchanged one — checked
by reading both new history rows rather than "the latest", since now()
stands still inside a transaction and made an earlier probe report a
false negative.
I also overwrote tests/unit/absence.test.ts instead of extending it. The
original cases are restored; the diff is 49 added lines and 3 changed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Karenz was doing duty as the name for every kind of extended absence, but
the cases behave differently in payroll and reporting — Wochenhilfe, a
Präsenzdienst, a long sick leave and a sabbatical are not the same thing.
The concept is now called Langzeitabwesenheit and carries which kind it is.
- employees.absence_type, constrained to the thirteen kinds. start_karenz
stores it on both paths (written straight away, or parked in the
pending_org_changes payload when the absence starts later);
record_karenz_return and the karenz_return branch of
apply_due_pending_changes clear it, so a returned employee does not keep
looking like they are still away. It also reaches employee_history, the
audit log and the employee export.
- The status enum value stays 'Karenz'. Postgres can rename an enum value in
place, but every stored function body that spells it would then reference
a value that no longer exists — a dozen functions across fifteen
migrations, rewritten for a label. The mapping lives in lib/absence.ts
instead, which is the single place the UI reads the display name from.
- Where a kind is recorded the chip shows it — "Bildungskarenz" says more
than "Langzeitabwesenheit". Absences predating the field have none and
fall back to the generic name rather than to a guess, and a value outside
the list is dropped rather than echoed into the UI.
- The export prints the display name, not the raw enum: a payroll hand-off
reading "Karenz" for what the app calls Langzeitabwesenheit only causes
questions. Audit filter options keep their stored values and change only
their labels.
- The seed spreads the twelve absences across the kinds; all of them being
Karenz would leave any breakdown by kind invisible.
