18.12.2020
IS PAY AT WORK DIFFERENT FROM HOMEWORK
In recent months, the topic of pay during work from home has become more and more topical, with the most controversial question being how to measure whether we are consolidating all our working time and if not, whether we deserve the full pay for which we have concluded our employment contract.
It should be noted that employers in practice constantly raise the question of whether and how much should be paid to an employee who is not fully charged during their working hours during the day.
These questions, despite their logic at first glance, have their clear and unambiguous answers, which are regulated by labor legislation in Bulgaria.
Let's imagine the following situation: What happens if, for example, in an online store for a certain time of day there are no orders from customers and users of a particular site? The employee, who is obliged to process the orders and hand them over to the courier afterwards from his home, is obviously not closely involved throughout the day. Or he had only two processing orders for the day - one at the beginning of the day and the other at the end. Is the employee employed or not during the time he does not process orders?
In the employment relationship, the employee has a fixed working time, a specific job, uses the premises and tools of his employer and is obliged to obey his legal orders, i.e. employment is performed by a worker in a workshop, an employee in an office, a waiter or a salesman, who must be at his workplace for 8 hours a day. It is the employer's commitment to consolidate this working time with certain tasks related to the contract, the opportunities and, above all, the job description of the employee.
The provisions of the Labor Code in Bulgaria apply to everyone and throughout the country, regardless of whether we do our work from home or from the office. The law is the same for everyone.
An employment relationship exists when the subject of the contract is not to achieve a certain result (sewing clothes, laying tiles, etc.), but to provide labor, i.e. the very laying of labor.
The obligations of the employee in the performance of the assigned work are described in the Labor Code. One of these obligations is related to the use of all working time to perform the assigned work and compliance with internal rules adopted by the company.
The culpable non-fulfillment of the labor obligations is a violation of the labor discipline. In these cases, the employer has the opportunity to impose one of the disciplinary sanctions provided for in the Labor Code - a remark, a warning of dismissal or dismissal.
The possible penalties are exhaustively indicated and it is not provided that in case the person does not perform the assigned work, no remuneration will be paid. It is not uncommon for employees to experience the arbitrariness of their employer, including in connection with deductions from wages, such as deductions for being late for work/meeting, talking on the phone, etc. Also, some employers impose a kind of "fines", which the legislator has not provided as a type of financial sanction against the employee.
The law states that without the consent of the employee no deductions can be made from his salary, except in the case of received advances, overpaid amounts due to technical errors, taxes, which under special laws may be deducted from wages, social security contributions, which are at the expense of the employee, seizures imposed by the respective order and other deductions, exhaustively listed in the law.
Reference:
Art. 126 of the Labor Code
Art. 186 of the Labor Code
Art. 210, para. 4 of the Labor Code
Art. 272, para 1 of the Labor Code
