In reaction to a growing number of complaints and queries the Defender received in 2015 from parents, non-profit organisations and local governments, she decided to issue a set of recommendations in this area to help parents and headteachers of the relevant school to resolve ambiguous situations.

 The objective of the Defender’s recommendation is, in particular, to assess criteria in terms of compliance with the Schools Act and the Anti-Discrimination Act and their application to various groups of children, especially from and outside the “catchment area”. The recommendation also contains instructions for assessing individual criteria and for pursuing administrative proceedings on (non-)acceptance to primary education. In this regard, the Defender also prepared a tool to assist the headteachers in decision-making concerning the applications filed on behalf of the children.

To the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, the Defender recommended to issue an implementing legal regulation that would stipulate binding conditions and organisation of enrolment in compulsory education. The Defender had included detailed information in a separate report under Section 24 (1)(c) of the Public Defender of Rights Act, which she was also sending to the Chamber of Deputies.

The complainant approached the Labour Inspectorate which then carried out an inspection of the employer. The Labour Inspectorate found unequal treatment of the complainant in multiple areas. Aside from not extending the employment contract, she was required to retroactively justify her absences, although attendance records were kept very loosely and leaves were not even required. The complainant was also sent for an extraordinary medical examination and was repeatedly insulted because of her age. The unfavourable treatment did not concern solely the complainant, but also her other older colleagues and, subsequently, the younger colleagues who stood up for the victims of bullying.

In her inquiry, the Defender found that the collected evidence proved extraordinary and unfavourable treatment of the complainant, where age was most likely the reason for this kind of treatment. The Defender concluded that bullying, or unequal treatment (Section 16 (1) of the Labour Code), from the employer does not necessarily have to consist of making unlawful demands; it may also consist in excessive or selective application of otherwise lawful steps. The fact that the employer exercises its rights vis-à-vis a certain employee in the lawful scope does not by itself exclude the possibility the employer is bullying or treating the employee unequally.

However, this case can only be finally resolved by the court, with which the complainant filed an action.

It was thus unclear why the CSSA did not grant the disability pension at the favourable rate (which would currently be over CZK 9,000 a month) when disability pension was granted to the complainant before he reached 28 years of age and where in the aforementioned period he had only 232 days when he was not paying insurance (i.e. less than 1 year).

Nevertheless, the CSSA noted in its statement that there were 652 days when insurance was not paid during the period from reaching 18 years of age to the arising of disability. As this exceeded 1 year, the CSSA believed the complainant was not entitled to a favourable rate of disability pension.   

Based on the above, the CSSA was notified that the complainant’s personal pension insurance sheet showed that he was registered for over 365 days in the register of job seekers without receiving unemployment benefits, and these days were credited for the purposes of pension calculation in the personal pension insurance sheet of 21 January 2011. The CSSA was further informed that it was likely that the complainant was also registered as a job seeker in other periods than from 8 October 2009 as indicated in the certificate issued by the Labour Office in Břeclav on 4 November 2010, which was a part of the file.

In response to the aforementioned steps, the CSSA credited the whole period when the complainant was registered in the register of job seekers and re-calculated the pension to its current amount of CZK 9,516. It also paid to the complainant the outstanding amount of pension corresponding to CZK 248,219.