Individual labour dispute

Abstract

The procedural protection of employment relations, or the possibility to defend one’s violated or threatened subjective right by means of procedural law, is very specific in the case of employment relations. The specificity is caused by the relationship between the employee and the employer, who at the time of conclusion of the employment relationship act as subjects of equal status, but in relation to the performance of the work itself, the employer acts in a superior position to the employee. The nature of this legal relationship is based on the basic characteristic of dependent work as work performed on the instructions of the employer, on his behalf, in most cases with the means of work provided by the employer, during working hours determined by the employer, with the employee receiving a wage or remuneration for the work performed as a quid pro quo. The characteristics of dependent work, the employment relationship itself, as a relationship between a superior and a subordinate entity, are also reflected in the procedural institutes regulating the labour law dispute. The recodification of civil procedural law in 2016 introduced the institute of individual labour law dispute into the Slovak legal order, which was not regulated before. In this article, we focus on the analysis of the legal regulation of the individual labour law dispute as a fundamental legal institute in the field of procedural protection of labour relations with regard to the relevant case law. Last but not least, we examine the effectiveness of the legal regulation 7 years later from a practical point of view and present our proposals de lege ferenda.