The state is preparing something new: People will decide when they come to work

For workers it sounds like a fairy tale, for employers it sounds like a horror: the amendment to the Labor Code provides for the possibility that the employee would schedule his own working hours at the workplace.

“The worker would come to the employer’s workplace entirely according to his needs,” said Dana Roučková, senior director of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, who is in charge of the legislation section, at a seminar in the Chamber of Deputies.

So-called “self-scheduling” is part of this year’s package of changes, which aim to better reconcile family and work life, and comes with proposals such as a two-year guarantee of the same job when returning from parental leave, or making it easier to simultaneously receive parental benefit and return to work at the same time agreement.

However, the text of the amendment and the explanatory report reveal that the right to self-scheduling has a necessary condition: the employer’s consent confirmed by a written contract is required. In addition, the contract can be terminated within fifteen days.

“The claim does not arise automatically. If the employer does not have the will to allow the employees, then it will not happen. By the nature of things, manufacturing companies, health care, education, there is no such thing as workers scheduling their own time,” Klára Gottwaldová, a lawyer who specializes in labor law, tempers expectations.

“I can’t really imagine which professions it would be suitable for,” Radovan Burkovič, president of the Association of Employment Agencies, thinks about practical use.

Michal Harásek, co-founder of the Tymbe application aimed at temporary workers, explains that due to the general lack of workers, work arrangements are already being made with great regard to the possibilities of a specific person: “The time of ordering shifts to workers under the threat of losing their job or temporary job is long gone,” he says.

The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, in response to a question about whom the change should help the most, stated that the Labor Code is a general legal regulation, and therefore the proposal is not aimed at ensuring flexibility for a specific group of employees.

In fact, experts talk about the fact that “self-scheduling” will be most applicable in the breakdown of services to contractors and will actually help employers more.

It is clear from the explanatory report to the law that, in addition to employees on the main employment contract, workers on agreements will also have the right.

It is important to remember that last year’s amendment to the Code, effective from October, added the obligation for contractors to schedule their working hours three days in advance, but with the possibility to agree otherwise.

A number of employers have criticized this as a move that goes against the flexibility of these hours, which are often disguised as part-time jobs.

Jana Stehlíková, managing director of the Flecto platform, which focuses on flexible working hours, describes that there is currently uncertainty over the need to list shifts, with the reference that other conditions can be negotiated. “In terms of interpretation, the lawyers sew terribly into it that if you agree on a difference, what is the shortest possible time,” he mentions.

Scheduling the working time by the worker himself thus brings certainty for the employer, according to several interviewed experts.

Jakub Augusta, spokesman for the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs indirectly confirms the logic. “It is precisely the contract holders that we expect to use the greater flexibility the most,” he states.

“First of all, we will order that they must know the schedule three days in advance, and then another amendment to the same labor code will say that if the workers want to, they can determine it themselves and that will wash away the whole thing,” Radovan Burkovič perceives the change in clear outlines.

Quite specifically, according to Jana Stehlíková from Flecto, the novelty can help fast food chains, where they use a system where workers choose from posted shifts.

“Purely theoretically, this should not be legally possible now. Because it is the employer, not the employee, who has to decide,” he says.

And lawyer Klára Gottwaldová also agrees with her. “This is a typical example. Because a lot of students work there. And that’s what it’s all about, they type their shifts according to how they have lessons,” he explains.

While Klára Gottwaldová perceives the change and the entire amendment to the Labor Code that is being prepared this year positively, another lawyer and specialist in the Labor Code who was contacted is, on the contrary, critical.

Eva Ostruszká Klusová from the law firm Forlex points out that the law also requires employees who schedule their own working hours to inform the employer about this in writing. “In practice, before the start of each shift, if he does not have a plan in advance, the employee should write to the employer that he is starting work, here is the schedule,” says the lawyer. It states that in practice this obligation will not be observed.

The amendment to the Labor Code, referred to as the flexi-amendment, is currently in the comment procedure and may still change. The Department of Labor anticipates that the changes could be effective from January 2025.