Eurofound's ERM database on restructuring-related legal regulations provides
information on regulations in the Member States of the European Union and Norway
which are explicitly or implicitly linked to anticipating and managing change.
Czechia: Wage guarantee in case of insolvency
Phase
Act No. 118/2000 Coll., on the protection of employees in the event of insolvency of their employer; Act No. 182/2006 Coll., on bankruptcy and settlement (Insolvency act)
Native name
Zákon č. 118/2000 Sb., o ochraně zaměstnanců při platební neschopnosti zaměstnavatele ve znění pozdějších předpisů; Zákon č. 182/2006 Sb., o úpadku a způsobech jeho řešení (insolvenční zákon ve znění pozdějších předpisů)
Type
Wage guarantee in case of insolvency
Added to database
08 May 2015
Article
Section 169 and 305 in Act No. 182/2006 Coll., on bankruptcy and settlement (Insolvency act); Section 2–5, 10, 11 in Act No. 118/2000 Coll., on the protection of employees in the event of insolvency of their employer
Description
In case of employer insolvency, employees' claims have priority in the liquidation process (judicial liquidation and reorganisation). All private law employment relationships are eligible, including part-time workers, fixed-term workers, domestic servants, but excluding some public officials.
In the following cases, employees are excluded from protection:
employees who are members of the employer’s statutory body and shareholders with half and higher participation;
employees who work for the employer as temporary agency workers (TAW) and whose wages are covered by a TAW insurance in case of insolvency.
In court decisions, wages have the same rank as the claims of the liquidation administrator (‘super priority’) (Bankruptcy law).
Managers must not obtain any property from assets of their employer (Bankruptcy law).
The application for claims has to be submitted for approval by the employee to the public employment service. The employee has to apply within 5 months and 15 calendar days following the date on which the labour office published its to official board information regarding the employer who has filed an insolvency petition or had been impounded property. The application has to be submitted to the public employment service which approves or rejects it. The instruction of the Deputy Minister for Employment of the MoLSA came in force in January 2019. It pinpoints the due date of the wage entitlements for the purposes of Act No. 118/2000 Coll.
All claims (wage, replacement alimony, payment for holidays, termination of a job, payment for time off to visit a doctor, etc.) that arose in the period of three months before and three months after the month when the insolvency was announced are covered. Wage claims are covered for a maximum period of three months, for a monthly amount of one and a half average wage in the Czech Republic as it is determined by law.
The guarantee is financed by the state; there are no employers’ contributions.
Data on expenditure on employment policy in the Czech Republic can be found here.
Additional metadata
Cost covered by
National government
Involved actors other than national government
Public employment service
Court
Involvement (others)
None
Thresholds
Affected employees: No, applicable in all circumstances Company size: No, applicable in all circumstances Additional information: No, applicable in all circumstances
Sources
Deutsch, A., 2011, Europäische Beispiele für die Insolvenzentgeltsicherung, Vienna, Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection/IEF
Sargant, M., 2007, Implementation Report Directive 80/987 EEC amended by Directive 2002/74/EC [protection of employees in the event of the insolvency of their employer], Human European Consultancy/Middlesex University Business School
European Commission, 2011, Report on the implementation and application of certain provisions of Directive 2008/94/EC on the protection of employees in the event of the insolvency of their employer, Brussels, COM(2011) 84 final,
Eurofound (2015), Czechia: Wage guarantee in case of insolvency, Restructuring legislation database, Dublin,
https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/legislationdb/wage-guarantee-in-case-of-insolvency/czechia
While large-scale redundancies at major manufacturers dominate the headlines, the true impact of this restructuring is being felt most acutely within the wider supply chain. This article examines the uneven distribution of job losses, the growing geographical shifts in production, ...
Eurofound’s ERM restructuring legislation database offers an overview of key restructuring-related regulations in the EU Member States and Norway. Its content is continuously updated to reflect any changes made by national legislators in response to, for instance, policy shifts, legal ...
Can Europe still achieve its ambitions for battery manufacturing? To answer this, the article looks at data from Eurofound’s European Restructuring Monitor and explores what recent large-scale restructuring events reveal about the state of play in the EU battery sector.
This working paper offers a comprehensive methodological overview of the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) databases. Even though the methodology has not changed over time, new categories have been added, and the way it has been used by researchers and policymakers ...