The Ministry of Labour proposes deregulation in contacts applying to employees, and changes in the payment of a cash equivalent for unused leave and in Company Social Benefit Fund
A bill has been published in the Government Legislation Centre as part of the announced process of deregulation. The bill is to change the form of submissions of certain documents between employers and employees or trade unions.
The bill is to ease the requirements as to forms and permit the use of paper or electronic form (and, therefore, without the need to use a signature by hand or a qualified electronic signature) for:
- information on monitoring provided prior to admission to work,
- information on the transfer of an undertaking that is addressed to employees,
- consulting a trade union on the intention to terminate an employee's contract,
- working time schedules (until now, written or electronic form was required),
- requests by employees for, inter alia, flexible working time, individual work schedules, systems of shortened working weeks / weekend work, private time, time off for overtime or unpaid leave,
- confirmation of being acquainted with H&S rules and regulations.
An additional change envisaged in the bill is the linking the deadline for payment of a cash equivalent for unused leave to the deadline at a company to pay a salary.
In addition, a change to the Company Social Benefit Fund Act has been proposed. It regards the way in which employees are represented when agreeing on Company Social Benefit Fund regulations or to waive creation of a fund in workplaces without trade unions. Currently, the Act refers to an “employee” elected by the workforce to represent their interests, and it is proposed to change this to “employees” elected by the workforce to represent their interests.