Partial termination notices for employees performing several types of work
In a case before the Supreme Court of the Czech Republic, an employee did not meet the legal pre-requisites for performing direct pedagogical activities, and was therefore given a notice of termination by the employer. However, other types of work such as driver/serviceperson were also specified in the employee’s employment contract. The Supreme Court contemplated whether it was possible to give a partial termination notice to the employee in this case, i.e. a termination notice for only one type of work.
The Supreme Court summarised the lower-instance courts’ decisions on whether the employee had met the legal pre-requisites for performing direct pedagogical activities. It also highlighted that in assessing this case, it was necessary to take into account that another type of work had been specified in the employee’s employment contract and that the type of work formed an essential element of the employment contract. The law allows the listing of several types of work in an employment contract, i.e. employers may assign work corresponding to any of the contracted types to their employees, in the agreed extent. If the employer can assign another type of work than the one for which the employee does not meet the legal pre-requisites, there are no grounds for giving notice to the employee. The employer may not give notice to an employee not meeting the legal pre-requisites only in relation to one of the agreed-on types of work.
According to the court, a termination notice for one type of work does not represent an act resulting in the termination of employment within the agreed extent but an act leading to a unilateral change to the employment contract. However, the Labour Code allows for such a change only in the case of a mandatory assignment of an employee to another type of work for a necessary period of time. A unilateral change to employment made by the employer using a notice is therefore null and void for its variance with the law and public order.
If the employee does not meet the pre-requisites for performing one type of work and the performance of another type of contracted work within the agreed extent is not needed by the employer, we recommend that the employer offer to the employee an agreement to change the content of employment. If the employee does not agree, this could meet the grounds for giving a notice of termination of employment to the employee for redundancy, provided that other statutory conditions have also been fulfilled.
Taking into account the above court decision, we recommend that employers who consider offering employees one employment contract involving several types of work with a clearly defined scope (i.e. the number of working hours for individual types of work) instead conclude two employment contracts. The agreed types of work would thus be performed by the employee via two side-by-side employment relationships whose commencement, change and termination could be dealt with separately.