Slovak Legal Newsflash

The employers complain on a long term basis that the Labour Code is outdated, not very dynamic, flexible and does not meet the current demands of society. The legislators tried to mitigate this dissatisfaction by a new amendment to the Labour Code. The amendment introduces a new reason allowing the employer to terminate the employment relationship with a particular employee.

As of January 1, 2022, the employer is entitled to terminate the employment relationship if the employee is at least 65 years old and reaches retirement age. Employers intending to use the new termination reason are no longer obliged to offer another suitable job to the dismissed employee. However, the employee is entitled to a severance payment. This applies also if the employment relationship was terminated due to the retirement age of the employee by a termination agreement.

It might seem that the newly introduced termination reason could be discriminatory towards elderly people. The legislator claims that this measure is justified because it is a part of the social policy supporting the employment rate and the labour market. It shall help to reduce unemployment of young people, increase the employment of fresh university and secondary school graduates and to boost the intergenerational exchange of employees in the workplace.

Health and Safety Rules Apply to Home Office

Employers, attention! Even in case of employees working remote from home, it is necessary to comply with corresponding health and safety rules. Various government regulations include a large number of rules that apply to home office work as well. These include for example the size of a desk, which must be at least 120 cm long and 75 cm wide, the type of a work seat, the lighting in the workplace, appropriate contrast between the screen and its background, the location of display, separation of keyboard from the screen, sufficient space in front of the keyboard to support the hands and forearms, regular work breaks, etc. The employer should therefore primarily know all relevant rules in detail in order to be able to take appropriate measures and monitor employees’ compliance with them.

Automatic Update of the Data in the Commercial Register

The statutory bodies of legal entities are obliged to update data on shareholders, statutory bodies, members of supervisory bodies, etc. registered in the Commercial Register, or to coincide such registered data with the current status (as far as applicable) until September 30, 2022.

The parliament recently passed an act that should disburden the entrepreneurs. According to the new regulation (the President’s signature is expected in the forthcoming weeks) the personal identification data, that is available to the government from other sources, should be automatically updated by May 31, 2022 at the latest. The government will subsequently inform the concerned individuals about the automatic update. Please bear in mind, should you not receive such notification by the end of May 2022, you will be obliged to file an application for corresponding registration by September 30, 2022. If the filed application concerns only an update of the above-mentioned data, the proceedings will be accomplished free of charge. As of October 2022, all updates of identification data will be done automatically. Thus, if the shareholder of a company changes their permanent residence address or their surname, the change shall automatically be reflected in the Commercial Register, i.e. without the need to apply specifically for registration of the corresponding change.

By JUDr. Valter Pieger and Mgr. Veronika Kvašňovská

Download

Author