According to the Slovak law, an employer may terminate employment by notice only for the reasons explicitly stipulated in the Labour Code. One of the reasons for termination most frequently used by employers is the so-called redundancy of an employee.

The concerned reason for termination is stipulated in Section 63 Subsection 1 Lit. b) of the Labour Code pursuant to which the employer may give notice to “an employee who has become redundant due to a written decision of the employer or a competent authority on change of the employer’s tasks, technical equipment, on reducing the number of employees in order to ensure labour efficiency, or on other organisational changes.

The given reason comes into consideration in case the employer decides to terminate the employee’s job position or to reduce the number of employees working at the concerned job position. However, as stated above, the termination of employment due to the employee’s redundancy must be preceded by the employer’s written decision in which the organizational change or reason (change of the employer’s tasks or technical equipment, reducing of the number of employees in order to ensure labour efficiency, etc.) needs to be clearly specified.

Furthermore, in order for notice due to the concerned reason to be valid, the following conditions need to be met:

  • the employer must be unable to continue employing the employee in the agreed place of work even for a shorter working time;
  • the employee must be unwilling to accept different job suitable for him or her (with regard to his/her state of health, skills and qualifications, etc.) which the employer has offered to the employee in the agreed place of work, or to undertake pre-training for such different job.

In this regard we also wish to emphasize that in case the employer terminates the employee’s employment for the reason of his/her redundancy, the employer must not, for a period of two months, re-create the terminated job position after termination of the employment and accept for such job another employee.

Last but not the least, we would also like to inform you that in case the notice for the employee’s redundancy is given, the employee in question shall be entitled to compensation for termination (Section 76 of the Labour Code). The amount of the compensation depends on the length of the employment relationship at the employer. The minimum compensation amounts to the employee’s average monthly earnings and the employee shall be entitled to such compensation in case his/her employment has lasted at least two years.

To conclude, in case the employer decides to use this reason for termination of the employment, it is necessary for the employer to proceed especially carefully and meet both formal and material requirements prescribed by the Labour Code.