At the outset, it should be stressed that the leave of vacant members of municipal councils is not fundamentally affected by the amendment to the Labour Code made by Act No. 285/2020 Coll. effective as of 1 January 2021. The leave of vacant deputies is exclusively regulated by Section 81a of Act No. 128/2020 Coll., on Municipalities. The general provisions of the Labour Code do not apply, except for those provisions that explicitly apply to persons performing public functions, i.e. until 31 December 2020 the provisions of Section 212(4) of the Labour Code and from 1 January 2021 the provisions of Section 216(4) of the Labour Code on the transfer of untaken leave.
A municipal councillor on leave shall be entitled to a leave of absence of 5 weeks per calendar year, i.e. 35 calendar days, while the Municipal Act provides in Section 81a(1) that no more than 25 days of holiday may fall on Monday to Friday, unless that day is a public holiday.
If the performance of the duties of a vacant member of the municipal council does not last for the whole calendar year, he or she shall be entitled to a pro rata share of the leave, which shall be one-twelfth of the annual leave for each calendar month of service (Section 81a(2) of the Municipal Act).
During the period of leave, the vacating deputy shall be entitled to full remuneration for the performance of his/her duties. In other words, his remuneration will not be reduced while he is on leave.
Untaken leave for the calendar year in question can be drawn in the following year. This leave shall then be taken in priority. Such unused leave shall not be carried over to the following calendar year and shall be forfeited without compensation (Section 81a(5) of the Municipal Act).
The Municipal Act allows for the reimbursement of unused vacation leave, but only in cases where there is a termination of office or a termination of the release to perform the office (e.g. resignation, removal from office, change from vacant to non-vacant). Compensation for untaken leave is determined as a multiple of the number of calendar days for which it is granted and one thirtieth of the remuneration due to the vacant deputy on the date of termination of office (Section 81a(8) of the Municipal Act).
The municipal authority shall keep records of the use of leave by vacant members of the municipal council. The vacating deputy shall notify the municipal authority in advance of taking leave through the mayor (Section 81a(10) of the Municipal Act).
Details including examples are given in Methodological Recommendation No. 5.5 - Remuneration and other related entitlements and financial benefits of members of the municipal council (pp. 66-72) - see this link.
Leave of absence of vacant councillors and the AVENSIO SW programme:
For records of leave taken the user code 6611 is usually used, or another code that the user sets. It is important that such a user code is stored system code 853.
For reimbursement of untaken leave The user code 6615 is used. In this case, it is also possible to use another one, but it must be set to system code 878.
The performance of the duties of a vacant councillor shall be recorded as a type and type of "employment relationship" 8-8 = Performance of the function. In the working time it is necessary to save working time 10 and timetable 146. The amount of the monthly remuneration is entered in the "Monthly tariff" field. The program automatically generates a payroll item with the code 3894 (system code 499).
