Obstacles at work

What it means

Obstacles at work are the situations in which an employee does not work yet the absence is excused. The Labour Code splits them into obstacles on the employee’s side and on the employer’s side, and states for each whether the time off is paid.

On the employee’s side sit the important personal obstacles: temporary incapacity for work, a medical appointment, a wedding or a death in the family, plus duties in the public interest. On the employer’s side it is mainly downtime and adverse weather.

An obstacle at work is not holiday: time lost to an obstacle does not count as holiday taken, and the employer cannot replace it with holiday without following the rules for scheduling leave. Absence that no obstacle covers is unexcused, and the employer may reduce holiday entitlement for it.

How it works in practice

A medical examination or treatment carries paid time off of at most seven days in a calendar year, and only where the appointment could not be arranged outside working hours. The compensation is computed from average earnings, not from basic pay.

Downtime and other obstacles on the employer’s side are paid at the full average earnings, and adverse weather at no less than half of them; where the employer has defined serious operational reasons in a written agreement with employee representatives, the compensation is at least sixty per cent of average earnings. Every obstacle has to be documented and entered in the attendance records.

In payroll we record each obstacle as a separate type of absence, because each feeds into pay differently. During sick leave the employer pays sick pay for the first days, for a doctor’s visit wage compensation from average earnings, and for caring for a family member nothing, as the Social Insurance Agency pays the benefit.

What to watch out for

When production stops, the employer orders holiday from one day to the next or sends people home unpaid. Holiday has to be announced at least fourteen days ahead unless the employee agrees to less, and downtime is payable, so the labour inspectorate makes the employer pay the difference and adds a fine.

A common mistake is paying wage compensation for an obstacle the employee never evidenced. The employer may ask for proof of the obstacle and its duration, and without a certificate in the personnel file it has no way, in an inspection or a dispute over unexcused absence, of explaining why it paid one person and not another.