06.10.2023

WORKING TIME FOR REMOTE WORK

Comment from the specialist

The term "working time" means the time established by law, another regulatory act, a collective labor agreement or an individual labor contract, during which the worker or employee is obliged to be available to the employer on the territory of the enterprise or in another place determined by him.

During this time, the worker or employee carries out various types of work and fulfills duties according to his profession, specialty and qualification in accordance with the clauses of the individual employment contract, the rules for the internal labor rules of the enterprise and the collective labor agreement. The employer is obliged to promptly provide the necessary conditions for the performance of labor duties.

Working time is one of the measures of any type of work and represents a period of time during which work is carried out. It is an inherent measure of a number of rights and obligations of the worker or employee, which are directly or indirectly related to the amount of work performed.

Bulgarian labor legislation regulates various forms of working time in order to ensure more flexible employment opportunities, as well as maximum use of the opportunities for employment under several employment contracts.

With the planned amendments to the labor legislation regulating remote work, it is planned to introduce specific norms related to the regulation of working hours in this mode of work. What are they and how will they be applied, comments Dr. Todor Kapitanov, an expert in labor law.

Changes related to reporting of work done and control of working hours are proposed. It is regulated that the working hours of the worker and the employee who performs remote work are established in the individual employment contract in accordance with the requirements of the Labor Code, the collective labor agreement and the rules for the internal labor order in the enterprise.

When organizing working hours, it is expressly required to observe the minimum amounts of inter-day and weekly rest established by law. The right is reserved for the worker or the employee who performs remote work to organize his own working hours (subject to the agreed working hours and the breaks provided for in the Labor Code) so that he is available and works at the time in which the employer is in a communication relationship with third parties. These changes guarantee the right to rest in accordance with the general requirements of labor legislation, preserving the possibility of flexibility in the organization of work on the part of the worker or employee.

The proposed changes do not cancel the requirement that the actual time worked be reflected monthly in a document according to a model approved by the employer. In this case, the worker or the employee performing remote work is responsible for the reliability of the data. In view of the increasingly widespread use of information systems for the organization and reporting of work, an alternative possibility to report the actual time worked through an automated system is regulated.

In this way, an opportunity is provided to reduce the administrative burden, as the accounting of the time worked will not require the filling of a separate document by the worker or the employee and, accordingly, the processing of the information by the employer, and for this it will be possible to use the information systems.

In this case, the employer is obliged, upon request, to provide the worker or the employee who works remotely with access to the data in the system for the working time worked by him. Security is created for the worker or employee, who will have information about the reported working time, which is related to his labor and insurance rights.