In today’s entry, we will answer some questions most frequently asked by clients of our PRWT accounting office regarding equivalent working time.

1. What is the maximum amount of overtime you can work in one month of work?

– the amount of overtime that can be worked in a given month depends on the employee’s working time in that month. The employee must have daily rest (11 hours) and weekly rest (35 hours), therefore, in an equivalent working time system, on a day when the employee would work for example 12 hours, he may have 1 hour of overtime, while on the day when he would 10 hours of work – 3 hours of overtime.

2. For how many hours rate is the vacation planned?

– in the amount resulting from the number of hours provided for in the schedule for a given working day.

Example:

The employee wants to take vacation leave on Thursday and Friday. His work schedule includes 12 hours of work on Thursday and 10 hours of work on Friday. The employee’s leave pool (26 days = 208 hours and 20 days = 160 hours, respectively) will be reduced by 22 hours.

3. How is on-demand leave settled?

– the employee is entitled to 4 days of leave on demand (these are days that reduce the employee’s holiday leave pool). Leave on request is granted for working days and in the number of hours scheduled for a given working day. For example, if an employee has 12 hours of work planned on such a day, he or she uses one day of leave and at the same time 12 hours of holiday leave.

4. Does the employee have to agree to change the existing work schedule?

– changing the work schedule after it has been communicated to employees may only take place in special cases (e.g. unforeseen absence of one of the employees), then it becomes necessary to introduce changes to the schedule. Due to the lack of statutory regulations regarding changes to the work schedule, the employer’s internal regulations are taken into account. If internal regulations regulate the cases in which changing the schedule is permissible and the procedure for introducing these changes, the employee is bound by the work schedule changed in this way.

5. Does the employee have to agree to overtime?

– the order to work overtime is binding on the employee. An employee may refuse such an order only if it is illegal, i.e. work performed overtime would constitute an exceedance of the working time standards in a given period, would apply to persons protected against working overtime (including pregnant women, adolescents, people with disabilities). or in particularly justified situations regarding the employee’s personal situation, e.g. health condition confirmed by a medical certificate. Apart from these cases, the refusal to work overtime may, depending on the circumstances of a given case, even constitute a serious violation of the employee’s basic duties and justify the termination of the employment contract.