An employee who brings a case to court against an employer should, in addition to presenting legal and factual arguments, correctly identify the defendant.
While this is usually not a major problem, in practice, depending on the status of the employing entity, difficulties may arise.
In this article, I will discuss the principles of correct identification of the employer in labor law disputes when the employer is a state organizational unit and the procedural consequences resulting from incorrect identification of the defendant.
Who exactly is the employer?
An employer is an organizational unit, even if it does not have legal personality, as well as a natural person, if it employs employees.
Employer independence
The doctrine emphasizes that for an organizational unit to be recognized as an employer, it must be independent. Such an entity must possess legal and financial independence. However, an entity that employs employees but is not organizationally separated from a larger entity (e.g., a department or branch) and that does not have the authority to independently engage employees, does not have a separate payroll fund, and its management bodies are not authorized to make declarations of intent or perform legal acts on its behalf cannot be deemed an employer.
State organizational units in labor disputes
According to established case law, in labor law and social security cases, the party to the proceedings is not the State Treasury, but rather the state organizational unit authorized to independently employ employees. Therefore, Article 67 §2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which states that in so-called "ordinary" procedural proceedings, the State Treasury is always a party, but only the organizational unit whose activities are related to the claim (statio fisci), does not apply to such cases.
In this regard, employers are granted special legal capacity. It should be emphasized that this is the most important practical example of the exercise of special legal capacity by state organizational units without legal personality.
Consequences of incorrectly identifying the employer in the process
Incorrect designation of the employer, due to the very short deadlines for filing an appeal against notice of termination and dissolution of the contract, i.e. 21 days, may result in dismissal of the claim .
According to the Supreme Court judgment, the incorrect designation of the defendant in the context of a complex structure of employer competences does not constitute a failure to meet the deadline for filing an appeal, but in a situation where the party is represented by a professional attorney, the incorrect designation of the employer may have negative consequences due to the failure to meet the deadline for filing an appeal.
Summary
As you can see, correctly identifying the parties is crucial when filing labor law claims, especially when the employee was employed by a state-owned entity. This capacity constitutes a special legal capacity, and incorrectly identifying the defendant can have very serious consequences for the employee.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
Legal status as of February 7, 2025
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