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The current amendment to the Czech Labour Code, which is commonly referred to as Flexinovela and will be referred to as such in this text, represents a significant legislative change in the labour law of the Czech Republic.
The Flexinovela brings several major changes in the field of employment relations, from changes in the regulation of probationary periods, through new rules on notice periods to new conditions for working parents and some other partial changes.
The following summary provides a detailed description of all the key changes that the Flexinovela brings and their practical implications for employers and employees.
After several months of waiting, the Flexinovela went through the complete legislative process and was signed by the President of the Republic on 25 April 2025 and published in the Collection of Laws on 29 April 2025.
Under the established procedures, it will take effect on the first day of the second month after promulgation, i.e. 1 June 2025. All changes described below will take effect on that date, unless otherwise specified for specific chapters.
In several cases, the Flexinovela encroaches on areas that have long been unchanged and are so entrenched that change is met with some degree of reluctance.
One such change is the extension of the maximum length of the trial period. Whereas traditionally for decades the maximum was 3 months for regular employees and more recently 6 months for managerial employees, these limits have now been increased to:
(within the meaning of Section 11 of the Labour Code)
An important novelty is also the possibility of an additional extension of the already agreed trial period, which was not possible before.
Under the new regulation, the employer and the employee can agree in writing to extend the trial period until the maximum limits (4 or 8 months) are reached. Thus, for example, if a trial period of two months was initially agreed, it can be extended by an amendment to the employment contract for a further two months before the trial period ends. Alternatively, if the employee has been promoted to a managerial position during the agreed four-month trial period, the trial period may be extended to eight months.
The Flexinovela also brings clearer rules for the extension of the trial period, which occurs by law.
The trial period is extended by law by the employee’s working days on which they have not worked a full shift during the trial period due to:
Obstacles at work (e.g. temporary incapacity for work, caring for a dependent person, attending a wedding)
Use of leave
And newly also for unexcused absence from work
However, if the employee works part of the shift, the trial period is not extended. In the case of a statutory extension, the trial period shall be extended by the employee’s working days, not by calendar days.
According to the transitional provisions, the decisive moment is when the trial period was agreed, i.e. when the employment contract was concluded. According to the transitional provisions of the Flexinovela, the trial period agreed before 1 June 2025 (i.e. before the Flexinovela comes into force) is governed by the existing (i.e. ‘old’) wording of the Labour Code. The transitional provisions thus link the new regulation not to the start of the employment relationship or the start of the trial period, but to the moment of its negotiation (which does not seem very practical).
The extended trial period and the possibility of its additional extension can therefore only be used for employment contracts concluded no earlier than 1 June 2025.
The Flexinovela brings a major change for parents on parental leave. It will now be possible for an employee to perform the same type of work for their employer during parental leave as agreed in their employment contract, through agreements on work outside the employment relationship (“DPP” or “DPČ”). Please note that this option is not available during maternity leave, which, according to the explanatory memorandum, has a clear aim and purpose, namely the recovery of the mother and the healthy development of the baby in the first days and weeks.
This provision responds to the practical needs of the labour market, as until now employees on parental leave could only work for their employer in a different position than the one specified in their employment contract. If they wanted to maintain their relationship with the employer and the work team and earn extra money, they had to look for a different job and this often led to circumvention of the law in practice.
The regulation remaining in place states that if there is no longer such a matching position with the employer, the employer must place the employee in the position according to their employment contract (i.e. the agreed type of work and the agreed place of work).
Significant changes also affect fixed-term employment relationships in the context of parental leave:
Substitutes for employees on parental leave: It will now be possible to renegotiate fixed-term employment relationships without limitation on the number of renegotiations if the employee is a substitute for a temporarily absent employee during maternity, paternity or parental leave. The current ‘three times and enough’ rule (once to agree, twice to repeat) will no longer apply in these cases
Maximum total duration: although there will be no limit on the number of repetitions, the individual duration of fixed-term employment relationships so negotiated may not exceed 3 years and the total duration may not exceed 9 years.
Another important change is the extension of the period for which the employer must place the employee in the same position (‘same chair’) when returning from parental leave. While previously the employer had to allow the employee to return to the original position only during the maternity leave, this obligation now applies until the child is 2 years old.
The new legislation introduces special compensation for employees in the public sector who work abroad when taking maternity or parental leave abroad. These employees will be entitled to reimbursement of accommodation expenses for 14 weeks at the same rate as before taking maternity or parental leave.
The condition is that the employee gives notice of the intention to take maternity or parental leave abroad at least 10 weeks before the expected date of the birth.
The transitional provisions are completely silent on the changes concerning parents, which means that all these changes must be applied automatically as from the entry into force of the Flexinovela, i.e. from 1 June 2025.
Among other things, this means and is confirmed by the interpretation of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, that the extended entitlement to the ‘same chair’ also applies to parental leave commenced before the Flexinovela takes effect, if the return falls between the effective date of the Flexinovela and the child’s 2nd year of age. To qualify for this entitlement, the employee must return to work from parental leave no later than the day before the child’s second birthday.
A very important change brought by the Flexinovela is the adjustment of the start of the notice period. The notice period will now start on the date of delivery of the notice and not, as was previously the case, on the first day of the calendar month following the delivery of the notice.
The notice period will then terminate at the end of the day that coincides numerically with the date of delivery of the notice in the following month(s). For example, if notice is given on 15 June, the notice period will end on 15 August (with two months’ notice). If there is no such calendar day in the month (e.g. if the notice is delivered on 31 December), then the notice period will end on the last day of the relevant month (i.e. 28 February).
The Flexinovela introduces different minimum notice periods depending on the reason for termination:
However, it is also possible to agree on a different length of notice period or a different way of running it, both for ‘normal’ and for sanctions grounds. If you are not interested in having the notice period start on delivery, which may cause different termination dates for individual employees, e.g. in the case of major organisational changes, then it is possible to keep the current arrangement. For new contracts, you will need to include a special provision in the contracts to set out the start of the notice period. The correct procedure for existing contracts will then depend on how you have contracts of employment currently set up.
The decisive moment is the moment of delivery of the notice. This means that if the notice was delivered at the latest on 31 May 2025, the shortened notice period for penalty grounds cannot be applied, nor can the notice period be calculated from the moment of delivery of the notice. The new rules will then apply to notice served from 1 June 2025 (i.e. after the Flexinovela comes into force), provided that you do not explicitly state in your employment contract with the employee how long the notice period is and how it runs (see the following section on this).
The crucial factor is how you have set the notice period:
In the case of new employees, it is advisable to include the length of the notice period and how it will run in the written information pursuant to Section 37 of the Labour Code, and therefore not to negotiate it in the employment contract.
The Flexinovela merges the existing termination grounds relating to the employee’s loss of medical ability. While until now the Labour Code distinguished between:
There will now be a single ground: long-term loss of capacity to perform the existing work for health reasons. This change responds to previous case law according to which a notice of termination was invalid if the employer used an incorrect reason for termination, even if in fact the reason for termination existed, but at the time the notice was given it was not certain whether the loss of medical capacity was caused by an occupational disease or accident at work (§ 52 písm. d)) or was not directly related to the performance of the employment (§ 52 písm. e)).
The existing termination ground relating to the maximum permissible level of exposure (§ 52(e)) will be recast as a separate termination ground.
A major new feature is the replacement of severance pay with a one-off compensation upon termination of employment due to long-term loss of medical capability as a result of:
Work injury
Occupational diseases (including the risk of occupational diseases)
The one-off compensation will be equivalent to 12 times the employee’s average monthly earnings and represents satisfaction – a one-off compensation provided to an employee whose employment has ended for work-related health reasons.
Key characteristics of a one-off compensation:
In the event of termination of employment due to reaching the maximum permissible level of exposure, the employee will remain entitled to severance pay in accordance with Section 67(3) of the Labour Code (also equal to 12 times the average earnings).
The decisive date is the date of termination of employment. Only employees whose employment ends on or after 1 June 2025 will be entitled to a one-off compensation. Employees whose employment ends due to loss of medical capacity due to an occupational injury or disease at the latest on 31 May 2025 are entitled to a severance payment under the current legislation.
The Flexinovela extends the time limits within which an employer may give notice or immediately terminate an employee’s employment for breach of employment obligations:
This change reflects the requirements of practice, as in many cases it is difficult for employers to obtain all the necessary information and fully assess the case within the current short timeframe.
The decisive point is the moment when the employee’s breach of their duties occurred. Therefore, the extended time limits apply only to breaches of employment obligations occurring from the date of effect of the Flexinovela. If the employee has breached their employment obligations before 1 June 2025, the subjective and objective time limits are governed by the original regulation.
The Flexinovela explicitly provides that in the event of an invalid termination of employment, the employee is entitled to compensation for untaken leave in addition to wages or salary.
This change responds to the development of case law in the European and subsequently also in the Czech environment and reflects the fact that court proceedings to determine the invalidity of an employment relationship are often quite lengthy.
The current wording of the Labour Code already allows the court to reduce (i.e. moderate) the wage compensation that will be paid to the employee in the event of success in the litigation. The Flexinovela extends the demonstrative list of facts that the court takes into account when reducing the wage compensation. A reduction of up to 6 times average earnings is possible not only if the employee had other employment during the litigation (and thus generated the income meant to be replaced by the wage compensation), but now also explicitly if the employee was engaged in other gainful activity (e.g. as a self-employed person). This is a logical change that is consistent with the intent of the provision and removes the apparent inequality between the forms of gainful activity of the employee.
Newly, an employee who considers the termination of the employment relationship invalid does not have to notify the employer that they insist on continued employment without undue delay. It is sufficient for them to do so at any later time, e.g. even in the course of (timely initiated) litigation, which is in line with previous case law.
The Flexinovela introduces a very specific method of electronic delivery of wage statement. The wage statement is included among the documents that must be delivered to the employee by hand (similar to a notice of termination or other forms of unilateral termination of employment). Thus, its electronic delivery was also subject to strict conditions, which, however, are contrary to the needs of practice.
It will now be possible to deliver the wage statement to an electronic address other than the employee’s private address, which the employee has designated for the delivery of unilateral documents, provided that the following conditions are met:
If the above conditions are met, it will therefore be possible to deliver the wage statement to the employee’s company email, or by storing it in the employer’s internal system (which will allow confirmation of reading by the employee).
Another change is that the employer is obliged to provide the employee with a wage statement before the commencement of work. Therefore, it will not be sufficient, as it was before, to hand over the wage statement on the day of commencement of work). The wage statement is delivered at the moment (i.e. not on the date) of acknowledgement of receipt. This is a consequence of the principle that the employee should be made aware of the pay conditions before commencing work.
The other options for delivery of the wage statement (including electronic delivery to the employee’s designated address) and their terms and conditions remain unchanged.
It is almost unbelievable that until now the basic method of payment of wages has been cash at the workplace. The Flexinovela finally responds to practice and establishes non-cash payment of wages as the primary method. Only in the following cases will wages be paid in cash during working hours and at the workplace:
Employee does not have a bank account
Employee does not agree to non-cash payment of wages or salary
Employee did not provide cooperation (did not provide account number)
Wages or salary are normally paid in Czech crowns to a bank account in the Czech Republic. The employee must have the money in the account on the pay date.
An important novelty is the extension of the possibility to pay wages in foreign currency. It will now be possible to pay wages in foreign currency in the presence of a so-called foreign element in the employment relationship, particularly in the following cases:
The employee’s consent is required for payment of wages in a foreign currency (it must be an agreement). Only the currency for which the Czech National Bank announces the exchange rate can be used. For the conversion, the Czech National Bank’s rate for the first working day of the month following the month for which the wage entitlement arose is used.
The Flexinovela introduces the possibility to employ minors from the age of 14, even if they have not yet completed compulsory schooling. These minors will be able to do so-called light work during the main holidays, which will not compromise their health, education or moral development. The main holidays are the summer holidays, i.e. July and August, with the exact dates of the holidays being determined annually by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (e.g. this year Saturday 28 June – Sunday 31 August 2025).
To conclude an employment contract or agreement with a person under 15 years of age, the consent of the legal guardian is required in accordance with the Civil Code.
Light work means work falling within the first category under the Public Health Protection Act which does not require special authorisation.
According to the explanatory report, the permitted activities include, for example:
Work of camp leaders and animators
Help in the kitchen
Hospitality service without selling alcohol
Manual car washing
Distribution of flyers
Help in administration
Social network management
Tutoring or translating
On the opposite, work in construction, operating machinery, in forestry or on night shifts is forbidden.
For minors under the age of 15 or those who have not completed compulsory schooling, working hours are limited to a maximum of 7 hours per day and 35 hours per week. These employees are not allowed to work between 20:00 and 6:00 and cannot work overtime.
For minors, the length of the weekly working time is assessed cumulatively for all employment relationships. Daily rest must be at least 14 hours.
Before starting work, minors must undergo an initial medical examination, which is paid for by the employer. This obligation applies to both employment and agreements for work performed outside the employment relationship (“DPP”, “DPČ”).
The Flexinovela introduces the possibility of reducing the daily rest period to 6 hours in the event of an emergency, which means:
This refers to situations that the employer is unable to control even with all due diligence, such as network outages, cyber and hacker attacks, leaks of hazardous substances, effects of storms, floods, etc.
In the event of a reduction in daily rest, the employer shall provide the employee with extended compensatory rest at the earliest possible time.
If the employee is providing long-term care, the employer will now have to excuse the employee’s absence despite the existence of serious operational reasons on the employer’s side with which the employee’s absence conflicts.
The possibility of transferring leave is now introduced also in the event of a change in the basic employment relationship, i.e. in the event of a change in the employment relationship to an agreement on the performance of work or an agreement to complete a job, and vice versa, in the event of the replacement of one form of agreement by another.
The Flexinovela regulates the conditions for proving the existence of a trade union in the employer. The trade union will now have to prove at the employer’s request that at least 3 employees of the employer are organised with it. This proof does not have to be part of the initial notification of the presence of a trade union with the employer.
Proof of membership is in the form of a notarial record, which is the result of the cooperation between the trade union and the employer. The costs of the notarial deed shall be borne by the employer.
The amendment explicitly prohibits so-called confidentiality clauses on wages/remuneration and their components. Violation of this prohibition may be punishable as an offence with a fine of up to CZK 400,000.
If you have clauses in your contracts of employment, you must remove them from the documents for incoming employees altogether. If it applies to existing employees, then the best solution is to sign amendments to remove (delete) the confidentiality clauses from the employment contracts.
However, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs admits that where it would not be feasible to conclude amendments or would be excessively administratively demanding, employers may cancel the concluded clauses by unilateral declaration addressed to the employees, by which the clauses will be declared null and void.
The Flexinovela clarifies the definition of a single person, who is:
The rules for calculating average earnings are also clarified for cases where average earnings are determined after termination of employment (for example, for severance pay purposes) and for cases where there is a change in hours of work:
Finally, rather surprisingly, the Flexinovela also brought the abolition of entry medical examinations, although these were originally part of another amendment.
As of 1 June 2025, it is therefore no longer necessary to carry out initial medical examinations for non-hazardous work classified as Category 1. This applies to all types of employment relationship, i.e. employment contract and agreements on work outside the employment relationship.
In case of agreements on work outside the employment relationship, employees classified in non-risk category 2 did not need to undergo an entry medical examination. However, the Flexinovela abolishes this rule, therefore from 1 June 2025, all employees on a agreements on work outside of employment relationship classified in category 2 will be required to undergo the entry medical examinations, regardless of risk.
However, the legislation allows employers to send applicants for an entry medical examination where the employer considers it appropriate.
After many weeks of discussions, adjustments and negotiations, the long-awaited amendment to the Czech Labour Code was finally approved.
On 13 September 2023, the House of Representatives overruled the Senate’s proposals to the amendment to Act No. 262/2006 Coll., the Labour Code (the “Labour Code”) and therefore approved the amendment as submitted to the Senate by the House of Representatives.
The Act was signed by the Czech President on 17 September 2023 and published in the Collection of Laws on 19 September 2023 as Act no. 281/2023 Coll.
The amendment is intended to enter into effect generally on the first day of the month following its publication in the Collection of Laws. The amendment will thus enter into force on 1 October 2023.
The provisions concerning the introduction of the right to annual leave for employees working under agreements on work performed outside the employment relationship are to take effect from the first day of the year following the publication of the amendment in the Collection of Laws, i.e. 1 January 2024.
This also applies to the amendment of Section 92 regulating continuous weekly rest and the modifications to Section 303 Subsection 3 limiting the activities defined therein for selected groups of public sector employees.
The amendment brings the following changes:
All changes concerning agreements outside the employment relationship (i.e. agreement on work performance or “DPP” and agreement on work activity or “DPČ”) are related to the underlying change of concept, according to which the working time provisions will now apply to these agreements.
As a result of the application of the working time provisions, the employer will be obliged to:
The schedule will need to be communicated to the employee at least 3 days in advance unless the parties agree on a longer or shorter reasonable period of time. The extent to which this period can be shortened is debatable; in special, justified cases, for example, a period of 1 day could be considered; however, until sufficient interpretative practice develops, we recommend that, in order to uphold the principle of predictability of the terms of the employment relationship, the three-day period is generally kept unless special circumstances of the work or operation are present.
All provisions concerning the scheduling of working time must be complied with:
This is also linked to the employer’s obligation to record working time.
Unless the employer is able to schedule working hours so that no work is performed during these times, DPP and DPČ workers will now be entitled to additional premiums for work on public holidays, weekends or night work.
From 1 January 2024, an employee working based on DPP or DPČ agreements will be entitled to annual leave.
In order to be entitled to annual leave, the employment relationship will have to last at least 4 weeks and the employee will have to work at least four times the notional (fictionally stipulated) working time (i.e. 80 hours; including any compensatory time).
The calculation of annual leave will be based on the notional working time of 20 hours per week, regardless of the actual agreed scope of work or work tasks. The principle for calculating the length of annual leave will be the same as to date, e.g. since the weekly working time for leave purposes is always 20 hours per week, an employee with a 4-week basic leave entitlement will be entitled to 1/52 of 80 hours, i.e. approximately 1.5 hours of annual leave, for every 20 hours worked (including compensatory time).
If the annual leave is not fully used up by the end of the employment, it will have to be compensated, similarly to employees working under employment contracts.
As a result of the application of the working time provisions, employees will be entitled to obstacles to work on their side, i.e. their absence will have to be excused by the employer.
Employees working on the basis of these agreements will not be legally entitled to salary compensation (remuneration), but it will be possible to agree on its provision or to establish such entitlement in the employer’s internal regulations. The period of obstacles to work will not count towards the legal limit for agreements (i.e. a maximum of 300 hours for DPP or half of the agreed working time in the case of DPČ), as this relates to the actual performance of work. Thus, if the employee takes annual leave or there are obstacles to work on his/her side, for example, this will not count towards these annual limits. However, according to the explanatory memorandum to the amendment, it should be noted that these compensatory periods will be counted in for the purposes of annual leave calculation according to the same rules as with standard employment contracts.
The employee will be able to request, within 1 month of receiving a termination notice, written specification of the reasons for employment termination, specifically if the employee believes to have received the notice as a result of asserting his/her rights, e.g.:
The employer will be obliged to provide such written justification of the notice without undue delay.
Employees will now be able to make a written request for employment under an employment contract instead of DPP/DPČ, if their relationship with the employer under such agreements outside of the employment relationship has lasted for a cumulative period of at least 180 days in a period of 12 consecutive months. However, the amendment does not establish an obligation to comply with such a request and only provides for the obligation of the employer to respond in writing to such a request within 30 days.
The Labour Code newly stipulates that the agreed work must be specified in DPP, as is already the case for DPČ.
Salary compensation from the agreement (as well as the advance on such compensation) is explicitly included among other income that may be subject to salary deductions under Section 147 of the Labour Code.
More significant changes are to be made to the employer’s information obligation under Section 37 of the Labour Code, both at the commencement of the employment relationship (or DPP/DPČ) and at the time of posting. These changes consist both in shortening the time limit for compliance with this obligation and in expanding the scope of information that must be provided to employees, which is also extended to cases where the employee is posted abroad by the employer.
The time limit for fulfilling this obligation is to be reduced from the current 30 days to 7 days from the beginning of the employment relationship. A significant part of the information obligation may be fulfilled by reference to information contained in internal regulations, so attention should be paid to their wording. The employer is obliged to inform the employee of any changes to the information without undue delay, at the latest on the day on which the change takes effect.
The employer will thus have to inform the employee in writing of the following (i.e. beyond the current scope of the information obligation):
The information obligation will have to be fulfilled regardless of the duration of the employment relationship, i.e. also for employment relationships shorter than 1 month. At the same time, the Ministry promised to develop a template information form pursuant to Section 37 of the Labour Code meeting the new statutory conditions. However, according to the information available to us, the Ministry has not yet prepared such a template.
As far as existing employees are concerned, if the information obligation was fulfilled before the amendment to the Labour Code came into effect, the employer is obliged to provide information according to the extended list of information only upon the employee’s written request within 7 days from the date of receipt of such a request.
Additional information beyond Section 37 must be provided in advance to employees posted abroad for a period exceeding 4 weeks, with a special category of data requested for employees posted in the context of the transnational provision of services in the EU. This includes data on:
The information obligation also applies to agreements on work performed outside the employment relationship in the newly inserted § 77a and § 77b of the Labour Code, which essentially reiterate the above provisions on information on the employment relationship and posting.
If the information is provided in electronic form, the information must be accessible to the employee in such a way that the employee can save and print it; the employer must keep proof of the provision of the information to the employee.
Changes also await us in the regulation of remote work, although compared to the originally published and widely media-hyped text of the amendment, the changes are ultimately of a rather minor nature, with the exception of the lump sum amount of reimbursement of expenses, which will hopefully bring clarity to the issue of reimbursement of expenses and its taxation.
The amendment distinguishes between remote work unilaterally ordered by the employer and remote work agreed between the parties.
It will now be possible, on the basis of the experience of the Covid era, to order remote work unilaterally. However, the possibilities for such order are very limited. It will only be possible to order remote work on the basis of a decree issued by a public authority and for a strictly necessary period of time if the nature of the work allows it. At the same time, the employee will have to indicate the location of the remote work site suitable for such work, or to state that no such site is available.
In other cases, remote work will only be possible by written agreement with the employee. The agreement may be separate but may also be a part of an employment contract or DPP and DPČ. The amendment no longer provides for any mandatory requisites of such an agreement and therefore leaves its content to the will of the parties. However, this also means that remote work can no longer be regulated exclusively as a benefit in the employer’s internal regulations but must always be subject of an agreement between the parties. In this context, the transitional provisions stipulate that if a written agreement on the conditions of remote work has not been concluded before the amendment entered into effect, the employer shall conclude such a written agreement no later than 1 month after the amendment enters into effect, i.e. by the end of October 2023.
The concluded agreement may be terminated by both parties in writing with 15-day notice period, which may be shortened or extended at will by agreement of the parties but must be of equal length for both parties. The period of notice shall commence on the date of delivery. The notice does not have to be justified in any way.
The termination of the agreement shall not affect the duration of the employee’s employment.
The possibility to terminate the agreement may be contractually excluded.
A pressing topic is the reimbursement of costs related to the performance of remote work.
The amendment presumes that costs will primarily be reimbursed in the amount actually incurred by the employee. However, it is possible to agree with the employee, or stipulate in an internal regulation, that these costs will be fully reimbursed by a lump sum. The amount of the lump sum compensation is no longer stipulated by the Labour Code and the regulation is left to a decree of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (proposed amount of CZK 4,60 per hour is expected based on the latest Ministry decree proposal, subject to regular indexation). The lump sum reimbursement is payable by the end of the following calendar month. In the private sphere it will be possible to provide a higher lump sum compensation, but according to the explanatory memorandum it should constitute taxable and insurable income of the employee. The lump sum compensation is granted for each hour of working remotely (shorter periods are added together for the purposes of compensation) and is rounded up to the nearest cent decimal.
Rather surprisingly, the Labour Code will now provide for the option to agree that the employee is not entitled to any reimbursement of expenses in connection with remote work. However, this requires an explicit (written) agreement (e.g. it cannot be set out in an internal regulation), which is something employers must bear in mind when drafting remote work agreements.
Persons working on the basis of DPP and DPČ agreements should only be entitled to reimbursement if this has been expressly agreed with them.
The originally planned and widely criticized entitlement of some employees to remote work has been completely abolished and only the possibility to request remote work has been enacted.
The employer does not have to approve such request (or demonstrate serious operational reasons or other circumstances of non-approval) but must give reasons in writing for refusing such a request.
The same group of employees can request remote work as can request a reduction in working time under the current legislation. The only difference is that the child age limit in case of remote work is set at 9 years, whereas for shorter working hours it is 15 years. The employer should word the refusal carefully to avoid discrimination, unequal treatment or other unlawful practices.
See the section on Carers’ rights: set out under 8 below for more information.
For the first time, the Labour Code contains an explicit legal regulation according to which it is possible to conclude (selected) employment documents in electronic form. This applies to the employment contract, the agreements on work performed outside the employment relationship as well as the agreements on their amendments or termination thereof. This is a change that practice has long called for.
For these purposes, it will be necessary to obtain from the employee his or her private electronic address (i.e. usually a private email address, possibly the employee’s private cloud storage address or the employee’s electronic address within a communications application) in writing.
Generally, the employee will be given the opportunity to withdraw from documents so executed within 7 days. However, this will not apply to termination agreements (i.e. termination of employment or DPP and DPČ). Furthermore, withdrawal will not be possible in those cases where the employee has already started acting according to the concluded document (e.g. the employee has started performing work according to an electronically concluded employment contract). Withdrawal will cancel the contract thus concluded from the outset, i.e. it will be treated as if it had never occurred.
Following the introduction of the possibility of electronic conclusion of certain employment documents, the range of documents that must be delivered to employee´s own hands has been logically narrowed down and other conditions of delivery have been adjusted.
Only unilateral documents, i.e. in particular termination of employment during the probationary period, notice of termination, immediate termination of employment, warning letter and salary assessment, are to be delivered into one´s own hands.
The employer will primarily deliver:
Delivery by post shall be secondary, if delivery cannot be made at the workplace.
In the delivery methods area, electronic delivery will be significantly simplified.
Electronic delivery will require the following:
However, the employee will no longer have to confirm receipt of the electronic message using his/her recognised electronic signature, which made this method of delivery effectively unusable in reality. The written acknowledgement can therefore take any form, provided that if the employee does not acknowledge receipt within 15 days, the document is deemed to have been delivered on the last day of that period.
Delivery to the employee’s and employer’s data box is also simplified:
The amendment refines the existing legislation by replacing the existing term “rest between shifts” with the term “daily rest“.
The Explanatory Memorandum adds that the decisive criterion for granting this continuous rest is a cycle of 24 consecutive hours and not the total time between the end of one shift and the start of the next shift. This intends, among other things, to help prevent possible circumvention of this regulation through overtime work.
The 24-hour daily rest cycle must include both the scheduled shift and any overtime work, on-call work and a continuous daily rest of at least 11 hours, or a reduced rest of at least 8 hours.
The wording is also clarified so that the employer is obliged to actually provide this daily rest and not just schedule it. A corresponding change in wording is also applied to the regulation of continuous weekly rest. The obligation to provide both longer daily rest (24 hours) and weekly rest (48 hours) to juvenile workers remains.
Parental leave is one of the important personal obstacles to work on the part of the employee.
In addition to the existing general regulation that the employee must notify the employer of an obstacle to work known to him in advance, the amendment provides that:
For reasons of legal certainty, a written form of the request is necessary. The employee’s right to apply for parental leave repeatedly, or to extend or terminate it and return to it again, remains.
The provisions of Section 241 et seq. of the Labour Code regulating the rights of those caring for others have been amended to a relatively significant extent:
The request should now be in writing and the employer’s reasons for not granting the request should also be in writing.
The Explanatory Memorandum further clarifies the intended application practice by stating that the request should be seen as the initiation of a dialogue on the change of the employment contract. Where the employer is willing to approve the request (agreeing in principle to shorter working hours or remote work), the employer will enter into negotiations with the employee and subsequently conclude an amendment to the employment contract, agreeing on all relevant matters. This should resolve previous disputes as to whether this constitutes an agreement on changed conditions or a unilateral approval (decision) by the employer, which the employer is then also entitled to change unilaterally. For the sake of completeness, it should be added that the parties are not restricted in their ability to agree on such changes only for a fixed time period (e.g. 6 months, 1 year, etc.).
From our point of view, the new regulation of the possible modification of working time and other conditions is rather unclear. However, in brief, the following applies:
Request for reinstatement or partial reinstatement of the original scope of working hours:
Request for further reduction of working time:
Request for other appropriate adjustment of working time:
In the context of shorter working hours, the Labour Code now provides for an express obligation to agree on shorter working hours in writing. In addition, for persons caring for a child under the age of one, the law also prohibits overtime order by the employer.
Despite considerable criticism from health professionals, the amendment reintroduces the possibility of additional agreed work in the health sector beyond the scope of generally permissible overtime. Its maximum scope is set at an average of 8 hours, or (in the case of ambulance service employees) 12 hours per week. This overtime work must be agreed in writing and comply with the statutory requirements. Employees shall not be pressured to conclude the agreement. The employer must keep a list of the employees with whom the agreement has been concluded and must also inform the competent labour inspection body of the application of the additional agreed overtime work.
The institute is introduced for a fixed period, from 1 October 2023 to 31 December 2028.
In connection with the amendment to the Labour Code, the employer should take the following factual/practical steps:
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