29 June 2019 saw the coming into force of the Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy’s regulation, first approved on 18 June 2019, concerning employment certificates. The new regulation removes the requirement for the employers to list the departing employee’s parents’ names on their employment certificates (also, the employer cannot ask for such data in the recruitment process).

The change follows revisions made to the Labour Code, in force since 4 May 2019, in which the list of personal data which the employer can ask the employee to provide, set out in art 221 para 1 of the Labour Code, was amended to remove the option whereby the employer can ask for the new employee’s parents’ names. This means that no employment certificate issued after 4 May 2019 should contain the employee’s parents’ names. The official revised version though has been in force only since 29 June.

Given the time lag, the regulation provides a non-standard solution to address cases where employment certificates issued in the interim period from 4 May 2019 to 28 June 2019 (the day before the regulation became law) included employee’s parents names despite prior changes to art 221 para 1 of the Labour Code. In such case employee can apply for a new certificate, but without this data. The right also applies to a person authorized by the employee to represent them, his spouse or a person eligible to claim a survivor’s pension, or, in the absence of such persons, the employee’s heirs.

Applications on paper or online can be made to the employer within 30 days of the regulation coming into force. Employers have only 7 days within which to issue a new certificate. If it turns out to be impossible to issue a revised certificate within 7 days of the application being submitted for reasons beyond the employer’s control, employers will have another 7 days within which they must either deliver the certificate by post or by any other method.

There is one other thing: once the employee has made the application, and no later than on the day the new employment certificate is issued, the employer must remove the previously issued certificate from the employee file and destroy it.