On 21 January 2020, the Czech Supreme Court issued a decision (case No. 21 Cdo 2034/2019) in which it dealt with questions surrounding the moment in which an employment relationship comes into existence where an applicant participates in a work trial, and the employer’s liability for a work accident sustained by an employee who performed activities that were not condoned by the employer.
In the case at hand, the Supreme Court dealt with a case in which a prospective employer (the defendant) had run a work trial, assigning a task to a job-seeker (the claimant) in order to assess their abilities. The applicant successfully completed the task even before the end of regular working hours. The agreement between the parties had been that they would meet on the following working day to conclude and execute the employment agreement. However, the applicant disregarded the instructions of his potential future employer and continued to work, without the employer’s approval. In the course of his work activities, he sustained injuries during an accident. He went to court to seek damages for pain and suffering, and compensation for his reduced ability to participate in public life.
The defense was built on the argument that the claimant, at the time of the accident, had not been the employee of the defendant but merely a job-seeker, who had strictly been assigned a work task in order to establish whether he met the hiring requirements in terms of his skills. The defendant had agreed with the claimant that the contract would only be signed the following day, and thus no employment agreement had come into existence. In addition, the defendant objected that the claimant had engaged in activities for which he had not been properly authorized, in spite of an explicit instruction by the defendant to the effect that he should leave the workplace.
The Supreme Court, which heard the appeal on a point of law brought by the claimant, arrived at the conclusion that the relationship between defendant and claimant had been a labor-law relationship, no matter the missing written agreement: “If a legal transaction which gives rise to (or amends) a basic labor-law relationship has not been made in the form prescribed by law, then its invalidity may only be invoked if performances have not yet been rendered. Given that employment agreements (and agreements on the performance of work outside an employment relationship) are transactions which give rise to a basic labor-law relationship, they must be considered valid – provided that performance under them has commenced – even if they were not made in writing as mandated by the law, but merely verbally, or else in a form which leaves no doubt as to the will to contract which the participants wished to express (i.e., by implication), because the defense of invalidity is in such a case no longer available. In determining the kind of legal relationship which has come into existence between the participants, their subjective ideas as to the nature of their relations is of no concern; what is of relevance is the assessment of the substance of their declaration of will, irrespective of the participants’ own assessment of their legal status after the fact – that is to say, the determination of the will which they actually expressed (whether explicitly or implied).” It follows that there can be no doubt as to the existence of a labor-law relationship between claimant and defendant, and that the arrangement whereby the employment agreement would have only been signed on the following day merely affects the duration of this labor-law relationship.
Another question of fundamental importance was that of whether to award damages for pain and suffering. As per the statutory provisions currently in force (Sec. 269 (1) of the Labor Code): “The employer is obliged to compensate the employee for damage and immaterial harm caused by a work accident, if the damage or immaterial harm was caused during, or in connection with, the discharge of work tasks.” In this respect, the Supreme Court concluded that “in assessing the defendant’s order for the claimant to ‘go home’, one must not disregard the circumstances under which it was given – i.e., here, the fact that the claimant had run out of the wooden boards needed to refit the lattice box pallets, and could not continue his work without additional supplies of material – and which were reflected in that order. Under these circumstances, the claimant had no reason to assume that the defendant would object to the claimant proactively procuring the missing material by cutting down wood on the freely accessible mitre saw, especially since the defendant itself had shortly before then given the claimant a work task which necessitated the use of welding equipment and a grinder, which doubtlessly can be the source of injuries.”
The decision at hand is rather problematic, considering the way in which the hiring process is conceived for those categories of employees whose skills are hard to determine by merely interviewing them. As such, the decision will have particular impact on “manual laborers”, whose skills are most efficiently verified during hiring by assigning them a “trial work task”. It remains to be seen what the hiring process for this group of employees will look like in the future, if employers want to avoid the instantaneous establishment of an employment relationship.
Source:
Supreme Court decision 21 Cdo 2034/2019