On 26 November, the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech republic passed an amendment bill to the Civil Code (so-called Little Amendment) and it has been forwarded to the Senate, which is yet to decide upon the further steps. The following series introduces the overview of the most significant proposed changes to the status quo.
- Employment of the Underage
In terms of chronology, the first conceptual change to the Civil Code is the amendment of the conditions of employment of underage employees; the current law bans (without an obvious reason) a person who has reached the age of 15 from taking up an employment while they still attend the secondary/basic school, which eliminates the possibility of them securing an employment (or other work-related relationship – e.g. a summer holiday jobs) for a period after the attendance has finished at a previous time.
The amendment, then, introduces a new scheme in which a 15-year-old may take up an employment in accordance with the Labour Code on condition that the date of the employment commencement may not fall on a day preceding the final day of the school attendance. Also, the regulation stipulating that a legal representative of a person younger than 16 years of age may terminate their employment if deemed necessary for the sake of education, development or health of the underage. The reason for the change was particularly the non-effectiveness and impracticability of the regulation.
The proposed amendment inevitably leads to removal of the regulations that have become unnecessary. Also, the Little Amendment bill contains invalidation of the respective Labour Code regulations regarding immediate termination of various types of employment contracts by the underage employee’s legal representative.
