Introduction
The Court of Justice of the EU has delivered a significant ruling on the equal treatment of part-time and full-time employees. The issue brought before the Court was whether providing additional pay for overtime work to part-time employees only for hours worked beyond the standard working hours set for full-time employees might constitute unfair treatment and indirect discrimination. Current Czech legislation does not comply with the ruling of the Court of Justice. Read on to learn more and find out the possible impact of the ruling on Czech employment relationships.
The Czech Labour Code explicitly states that overtime work is, among other conditions, work beyond “set weekly working hours”, which are usually 40 hours per week. This rule applies to both full-time and part-time employees. As a result, part-time employees are not entitled to additional overtime pay unless they work more than the set weekly working hours, regardless of their actual contractual working hours. Similar rules exist in Germany and were subject to review by the Court of Justice.
In that case, the Court of Justice ruled that providing additional overtime pay only for work exceeding the full-time working hours constituted less-favourable treatment of part-time employees, if, otherwise, the part-time employees were in a comparable situation as the full-time employees, e.g. they performed the same tasks, worked on the same role. It might also constitute indirect discrimination on the grounds of sex.
The rationale is that full-time employees are entitled to additional overtime pay from the first hour of work beyond their weekly working hours, as opposed to part-time employees, who must first work enough hours to equate to a full-time employee before they become entitled to additional pay. This constitutes less-favourable treatment of part-time employees. If the percentage of women working part-time is higher than the percentage of men working part-time, which is often the case, the relevant rule also constitutes indirect discrimination on the grounds of sex.
Current Czech legislation thus does not comply with the view of the Court of Justice. However, it can be argued that employers in the Czech Republic cannot order part-time employees to work more than their contractual working hours, which means that part-time employees can freely choose whether they want to work more hours without receiving additional pay.
Nevertheless, we might see future changes to the Czech Labour Code regarding the rules for overtime pay for part-time employees, as Czech legislation has been amended in the past in reaction to the Court of Justice rulings. For example, last year the Labour Code was amended to comply with the Court’s interpretation of uninterrupted rest periods. Another example is the introduction of the employee’s entitlement to vacation in the event of invalid employment termination in the “Flexi amendment”, which has been approved by the Government and will now be discussed in Parliament. Parliamentary discussions regarding the “Flexi amendment” seem a good opportunity to propose further legislative changes to address the problematic provision on overtime pay for part-time employees.
Conclusion
In the current situation, employers who do not provide part-time employees with additional overtime pay for work which does not exceed the full-time working hours act in line with the law, and they are not at risk of facing penalties or lawsuits. However, employers should be aware of the recent ruling of the Court of Justice, as it is possible that it might lead to an amendment to the Czech Labour Code.
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