Full disclosure: New employer obligations in Slovakia
February 2019 – Recently approved amendments to the Slovak Labour Code and Employment Services Act impose new obligations on employers in Slovakia as of January 2019.
Among the newly introduced changes, employers can no longer bind their employees with the obligation to keep their work conditions confidential, including information about their salaries. It is also now expressly forbidden to penalise employees if they disclose such information. Any previous confidentiality obligations regarding salaries and work conditions agreed in employment contracts are now deemed invalid. As a result, it is recommended to amend any existing employment contract templates that include such confidentiality obligations and to leave out such provisions from employment contracts in the future.
Employers must also now report the number of job vacancies to their local Labour Office, including details of the job position, the required education and work experience, working hours and salary. They can meet this obligation and report job vacancies in a number of ways:
(a) in person at the relevant local Labour Office;
(b) via a phone call to the relevant local Labour Office;
(c) via an e-mail addressed to the relevant local Labour Office;
(d) using the website www.upsvr.gov.sk, where they can fill in the “Report job vacancies” form;
(e) using the website www.istp.sk, which the Central Labour Office set up specifically for such reporting;
(f) using the commercial job advertising websites www.profesia.sk or www.kariera.sk; here, however, the service is charged, unlike in cases (a) to (e) above, which are provided free of charge.
The time period during which the employer must report the vacancy is not specified, and so it is unclear whether they must do so immediately or at any time during which the vacancy exists. Likewise, employers have no obligation to report when the vacancy is no longer available. They simply fulfil their reporting duty by using one of the above-described notification options. In light of these uncertainties, a number of employment agencies have challenged the new obligations, saying that they lack certain details, such as the time limit for reporting job vacancies and their unavailability or effective control mechanisms.
Employers that do not report job vacancies can be penalised with a fine of EUR 300 imposed by the central or relevant local Labour Office. How this will be enforced, however, remains unclear.
For more details please contact Dominika Bajzáthová, Senior Associate, at , or Lívia Miklenčičová, Junior Associate, at .