Comparative Polish-Czech Labour Law Seminars at the University of Gdańsk

From 20 to 23 October, a series of seminars devoted to comparative labour law took place at our Faculty. Our guest was Dr Vojtěch Kadlubiec from Masaryk University in Brno. The discussions were attended by students of our Faculty from the labour law diploma seminar and were moderated by Dr Marek Benio and Dr Michał Szypniewski.

Dr Kadlubiec spoke with great enthusiasm about flexible forms of employment in the Czech Republic, highlighting the differences between the Czech and Polish legal systems. Even at first glance, it is clear that some solutions operate in a completely different way.

Czech law uses the concept of dependent work, which makes it easier to define the boundary between an employment relationship and other, more autonomous forms of service provision. The absence of this concept in the Polish system can lead to interpretative difficulties, including the heated debate on the determination of an employment relationship in the case of civil-law contracts by way of a decision issued by the National Labour Inspectorate.

The Czech Labour Code provides for two special forms of employment: an agreement to perform work activity and an agreement to complete a job. Historically, both were used as a way to earn extra income alongside regular employment, but today they also function independently of the primary employer. They are limited in terms of working time: up to 20 hours per week on average or 300 hours per year.

The Czech Republic also permits so-called zero-hour contracts, which require the employee to remain available for work without any guarantee that work will actually be assigned. However, an employee bound by such a contract cannot refuse to accept work without risking liability for damages.

Dr Kadlubiec also addressed differences in the area of social security. In Poland, contributions are paid on all civil-law contracts until the total income reaches or exceeds the minimum wage. In the Czech Republic, by contrast, contributions are collected only on contracts where the monthly income exceeds 11,500 Czech koruna (approximately 2,000 Polish zloty).

The final seminar in the series took place on Thursday, 23 October and, as befits a fitting conclusion, it was devoted to Czech regulations on the termination of employment relationships.

The meetings demonstrated how much can be learned by looking at one’s own legal solutions from the perspective of another country’s law.