Member Article

The Government of the Slovak Republic approved on 31 March 2020 further draft bills in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. One of these is also an act amending the Labour Code[1]and other particular laws in the field of employment and social security. You can find a brief summary on this amendment below. This legal regulation has not come into force so far – the bill must be submitted to the Slovak parliament yet, and only after its approval by the Slovak parliament the bill can be submitted to the president for signing (and then officially published). Thus, the below summary is only preliminary and subject to changes.

Home Office – New Rules

In one of our previous legal alerts we advised that, in principle, an employer cannot order a “home office” to an employee if the employee does not agree therewith.

Pursuant to the new legal regulation, during an emergency situation, state of emergency and state of distress[“núdzový stav”](“State of Crisis”), the employer shall be entitled to order the home office to the employee if the work agreed under the respective employment contract allows to do so i.e. if the agreed work can also be performed from home in the “home office” mode.

Similarly, the employee is entitled to demand to perform work from home (i.e. the employer must permit it):

• if the work agreed under the respective employment contract allows to do so,
• unless there are serious operational reasons (at the employer) not enabling such work.
  
  

More you can find more here.

We do not elaborate more on these new crisis measures in this post.

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We monitor the current legislative developments and will continue to post updates on the above information (and also on other legislative changes and also interesting legal topics). This post was prepared on 31 March 2020.

[1] Act No. 311/2002 Coll. The Labour Code, as amended.