LABOR WARS: Job Complexity Levels vs. Collective Bargaining Agreement

Every employer is required to assign a complexity level to their job positions. However, if employee remuneration is regulated by a collective bargaining agreement, the employer is exempt from this obligation.

We have consistently upheld this argument while representing our client, who had a collective bargaining agreement in place with all legal requirements fulfilled. Nevertheless, one of the client’s employees insisted that the employer assign a complexity level to each job position. The employee argued that the collective agreement did not include all remuneration details, such as forms of remuneration, additional compensation components, and conditions for their provision. The employee equated the term “employee remuneration” under § 120(1) of the Labor Code with “wage conditions” as defined in § 119(3) of the Labor Code.

Despite the statutory wording, the labor inspectorates further complicated the situation for our client by supporting the employee’s claims.

Once again, we disagreed with the labor inspectorate’s position, and the matter had to be resolved by the court. After multiple hearings, the court sided with our interpretation, ruling that the terms “employee remuneration” and “wage conditions” have distinct meanings. As a result, the employee’s lawsuit was dismissed. The court confirmed that our client had properly regulated employee remuneration in the collective agreement, even if not in the level of detail required to define “wage conditions” under § 119 of the Labor Code.

From a labor law perspective, this is a significant legal precedent, as it provides employers with legal certainty. It confirms that a collective bargaining agreement does not need to include exhaustive details of wage conditions for employee remuneration to be considered properly regulated under § 120 of the Labor Code. Consequently, employers are not required to assign complexity levels to job positions.

The case was handled by attorneys from our labor dispute team - Peter Džurný, Adrián Fedor, and Andrej Kostroš.