Dear Colleagues,
We would like to contact you on behalf of our labour union Independent Maintenance Unions and other workers in the matter of information published today by TPCA regarding the guaranteed bonus for 2020.
As you all know, one part of the salary of all TPCA employees is, among other things, a company bonus. It has been regulated in previous periods in collective agreements (and is also included in the draft collective agreement for the period 2020 to 2021), and the conditions for its payment are set out in the internal TPCA wage policy directive, available on the company’s intranet. It is still valid for this year.
TPCA and its all labour unions understand it as the 13th salary provided to employees, always in the amount defined within the rules of collective bargaining, which is then incorporated into the text of the internal regulation. Thus, it is an amount that must be paid in full to an employee who has been (or was prepared to go to work) for the entire half-year. The directive for the year 2020 says the same – that all of us (according to positions) should receive an additional amount of at least CZK 12,750 in the pay period for this month (ie 10.7.).
Therfore, we would like to express our concern at the intended reduction of the first part of the guaranteed bonus by TPCA. We were informed about this step for the first time on 10.6. within the collective bargaining (today the information was distributed by TPCA to all employees in the relevant material), and since then we have been dealing with the situation intensively. After consulting with an external expert for labor law we are convinced, that TPCAs are not allowed to do so. We will therefore make every legal effort to ensure that TPCA provides the first part of the guaranteed bonus in full.
The TPCA material regarding the company bonus from June 17 deserves a brief comment. In particular, it must be seen that the basis for evaluating and providing a guaranteed bonus is the internal wage policy directive. Of course, it also binds TPCA as an employer, because it is impossible for wage rights, which are based on an internal regulation and (possibly) supplemented by a collective agreement, to be unsatisfied, even in part. For the sake of completeness we would like to clarify, that the conclusion of a collective agreement is not decisive for the legal assessment, because the entitlement to a guaranteed bonus is already established by an internal regulation.
The Internal Wage Policy Directive is clearly based on the fact that the guaranteed bonus (13th salary) is always paid regardless of the evaluation of indicators (these are important only for the purposes of evaluating the variable bonus paid after their evaluation for the next calendar year). Its purpose is therefore to appreciate the value of each employee to the achievement of the company’s results in the sense that the guaranteed bonus is considered as a reward for the maximum effort, regardless of whether or not above-average results actually appear.
The situation cannot be changed even by the proclaim stopping of production due to measures against the spread of COVID-19. The text of the wage policy explicitly states that the employee’s effort to participate in the company’s results is sufficient to provide a guaranteed bonus in full. Besides, the Directive stipulates besided, that non-productive shifts due to a collective obstacle on the part of the employer (eg downtime or partial unemployment) must be regarded as worked for the purposes of the guaranteed bonus. We therefore consider the TPCA procedure to be illegal, and we will adapt the next procedure according to how the TPCAs will respond to our argument.
We would therefore like to inform you that our labour union will fulfill its mission and will, in accordance with the law, but strongly, defend the wage rights of its members and other TPCA employees, which are, due to a TPCA approach that monitors only economic results, without sufficient consideration of employees’ deteriorating social situation. Therefore, our next steps will now be to engage in a mutual dialogue with the TPCA management to resolve the relationship. However, if they fail, we are ready to involve the relevant state organizations, in particular labor inspectorates, in order to ensure social peace.
We must express our concern and a disappointment at the approach of the remaining labour unions, which do not contradict this TPCA approach at all. Our labour union will never join them in this and will strive to resolve this matter so that the rights of TPCA employees (currently, especially regarding the guaranteed bonus) are fully respected and defended. We would like to express our hope that other colleagues from other labour unions will join us and we join forces.
In case of any questions, our labour union is available for you at any time.
Regards
Petr Bíba, chairman