In accordance with the Article 57 of the Labour Law (“Law”) the employer may reschedule the working hours of the employees if so required by the (1) nature of the activity, (2) organization of work, (2) better utilization of means of work, (3) more rationalized use of working hours, and (4) execution of a specific job within the set time limits.
Thereby, in accordance with the Law the redistribution of working hours shall be done in a manner ensuring that total working hours of an employee in a period of six months during one calendar year does not exceed the average contracted working hours of the employee.
One of main questions that appears in practice concerning the redistribution of working hours is the possibility of introducing a new redistribution of working hours in case where the employer has already had a redistribution of working hours in the first six months of a calendar year, for the reasons of unclarity of this provision of the Law (six months during a calendar year).
In that regard, the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs, the Department of Labor (“Ministry”) issued an official opinion no. 011-00-20/2015-02 in which it takes stance that, if the conditions for the redistribution of working hours are fulfilled, there are no barriers to the employer, who introduced the redistribution of working hours for the first six months during a calendar year, to reintroduce the redistribution of working hours in the next six months.
In this way, Ministry removed the doubt about the interpretation of the Article 57, paragraph 2 of the Law, although the opinions of the Ministry are not binding for the court in case of court dispute.