How to set wage ranges in job vacancy reports
When employing foreigners, reporting job vacancies to the Labour Office is an important step. Practice shows that when preparing a job vacancy report, it is important to correctly define not just the required qualification and place of work, but also the wage conditions.
An application for an employee card may be submitted by a foreigner whose purpose of stay is to be employed in one of the job positions published in the central register of vacant positions that may be staffed by employee card holders. All data and documents attached to the application must correspond to the specifics of the job position, i.e., the required qualifications, place of work, and wages, so that before a job vacancy is published and made available to foreign candidates, it undergoes a labour market stress test as the Labour Office examines whether there is a candidate for the position from the Czech Republic or another EU member state. Only after this test, which takes ten to thirty days, it is possible to fill the job position with a foreigner.
Practice shows that it is very important for the employer to state in the vacancy report the amount or range of the wage that corresponds to the wage conditions that will subsequently be contracted with the foreigner; otherwise, the employer risks that they will be unable to staff the job by the foreigner. We would like to draw your attention to a court decision in which a court confirmed the rejection of an application to extend a foreigner's employee card in a case where the wage stated in the employment documents attached to the application was more than 30% higher than the maximum wage that the foreigner could achieve according to the job vacancy report. In the court’s opinion, the change in the wage in effect meant employing the foreigner in another job position which had not properly passed the labour market stress test. Therefore, it could not be filled with a foreigner.
In its decision, the court provided some guidance on how to set the wage amount, or wage range, in job vacancy reports. First of all, wages should always be set in gross amounts, i.e., before tax and other levies. Tax and other levies depend on a number employees’ personal factors (e.g., number of children, entitlement to tax credit, etc.) which means that the employer cannot in fact report the net amount of wages: net wages of employees in the same job position and with the same gross wages may vary depending on their personal circumstances. The wage specification must also include personal bonuses, extra pay for overtime work, night work, etc. In general, wage conditions comprise the summary of all circumstances that may affect the determination of the amount of wages. And the knowledge of all these conditions is crucial for the candidate to be interested in and, consequently, hired for the advertised job. The opposite approach could affect candidates' decisions as to whether to apply for such a position, which would again mean that the labour market test could not be considered relevant.
To conclude, we recommend that employers carefully consider and set the wage conditions in their job vacancy reports. Incorrectly set wage conditions can make it much more difficult to recruit foreigners for vacant job positions.