The contents of the employment contract are stipulated in the Law on Labour Relations (Article 28). In addition to other provisions, the employment contract should also contain provisions on:

Title of the job position (including brief description of the work to be performed by the worker according to the employment contract);

Duration of the employment (in case of a fixed term contract);

Daily or weekly regular  hours of work and the schedule of work;

Amount of the base wage (expressed as a monetary remuneration the employee is entitled to for performing the work in accordance with the law, collective agreement and employment contract);

Other benefits to which the employee shall be entitled to in accordance with the law and collective agreement;

Annual leave, i.e. the method for determining the annual leave.

The employment contract may also contain other issues, which have not been stipulated in the Law on Labour Relations, but they should not be departing from the general rights set in this law or in collective agreements. Amendments to the employment contract (i.e. changes of terms and conditions of the employment contract) may be proposed by the employer or the employee. Such amendments may be carried out only if both parties agree (consent) to the proposed amendments to the conditions, and thereby conclude an ‘annex to the employment contract’. Amendments (annex) to the employment contract prevents the employer to unilaterally (without the worker’s consent) change the job position or any other essential condition in the worker’s employment contract (e.g. reducing salary, changing the work place, or changing hours of work from full to part time, or vice versa).   In practice, change of conditions in the employment contract is oftentimes a result of elimination of the job position, or workload decrease at the employer. Such changes make the worker choose between ‘accepting the amended conditions by the employer that usually lead to salary reduction’ and ‘losing their job’. If a worker accepts amended conditions, the amended contract replaces the existing employment contract leaving no disputes between the parties. But if a worker refuses to conclude the annex of the contract amending the existing employment contract, the employer can achieve their intention by simply handing the worker a ‘termination of the employment contract by proposing a new amended contract’. In this case by ‘termination of the employment contract by proposing a new amended contract’, the existing employment contract is terminated simultaneously, whereby the worker is proposed to conclude an employment contract under amended conditions.

Both parts (termination of the employment contract and the proposal of a new and/or amended contract) must be mutually related and be an integral part of a single act ‘termination and proposal of a new amended contract’. The employer must have a just cause for termination, regardless of the proposal of a new amended employment contract, and the worker must declare their position concerning the new, amended employment contract within a period of 15 days upon the date of receipt of the proposal. According to the Macedonian labour legislation, termination by proposing a new amended employment contract may have two different outcomes – acceptance of the proposal and non-acceptance of the proposal of a new amended employment contract.

Fixed-term employment contract

Fixed-term employment contract is an employment contract whose duration is determined in advance. The term with regards to which the fixed-term employment contract is concluded may be defined in respect of calendar (e.g. a contract is concluded for a total period of three months from the day it was concluded, or the contract expires on 10 June 2016), or also, by fulfilling a certain requirement, i.e. undertaking a given assignment (e.g. project work) and by the occurrence of a certain event (return to work of a temporarily absent worker who used sick leave, maternity leave or parental leave, and similar). In the Macedonian labour legislation, there is a 5 year limitation to the longest duration of a fixed-term employment, and it covers undertaking the same work, with or without interruptions. The number of successive fixed-term employment contracts is not limited.  It means the employer may conclude a single or several fixed-term employment contracts with an employee, for performing the same work (i.e. work belonging to the same group or category of job positions), with or without interruptions between contracts. If a worker continues to perform the same work following the expiration of the longest prescribed term for limiting the duration of the employment contract, then their employment is transformed from fixed-term employment into permanent employment.

In Macedonian labour legislation, based on the “principle of equal treatment” fixed-term employees enjoy the same rights at work as employees with a permanent employment contract. Hence, fixed-term employees, regardless of the duration of their employment, enjoy the identical rights as permanent employees, including right to salary, protection of safety and health at work, limited working hours, break, daily and weekly rest period, protection from terminations, social security rights and similar rights. 

Seasonal work

In the Macedonian labour legislation, seasonal work implies work which is not performed during the whole year, but in certain periods – seasons, which may last up to eight months within a period of 12 successive months. Similar to rescheduling the hours of work, seasonal workers may work beyond full time in a given seasonal work period (more than 40 hours of work), whereby the hours of work performed will be calculated as additional working days in their years of service or will be compensated with shorter hours of work in the rest of the period of the seasonal work duration. Anyhow, the Law on Labour Relations sets up an upper limit for longest duration of hours of work for seasonal workers, which may not be longer than 12 hours per day, or 55 hours per week, for a duration of no longer than 4 months.

Temporary agency employment

Temporary agency employment is an atypical form of employment regulated in the Law on Private Employment Agencies.  It implies tripartite legal relation including private employment agency with a licence for temporary employments (agency); temporary agency worker (worker) and employer-user. The tripartite legal relation among parties to the temporary agency employment is regulated with two formal contracts: employment contract (concluded between the Agency and the Worker), and contract for hiring out a worker (concluded between the Agency and the Employer-User). The work  a worker is hired out to perform for the employer-user should be of ‘temporary nature’ and should be related to precise reasons stipulated by law, whereas  the period for hiring the worker out to the employer-user may last until their work is needed, but no longer than two years, with or without interruptions. The rights of temporary agency workers are made equal with all rights of workers who have established employment with the employer-user without agency mediation. Such rights are salary and other remuneration related to work, contributions to salary for mandatory social security (paid by the agency, even in cases where a worker is hired out by employer-user for a single day only), hours of work, annual leave and absence, and similar rights.

Part-time employment contract

The Law on Labour Relations defines part-time employment as work with hours of work less than full time. It means that part-time employment may be established regardless of the duration defined in the employment contract (fixed-term or permanent), as well as of the weekly scope of hours of work, which should be less than the hours of full time work (1-39). The part-time employment contract should define the start and the end of daily hours of work of the employee, and the employer should keep separate records on part-time workers. Part-time workers have the same working conditions and are entitled to equal employment rights as full-time workers. Yet, due to the lesser scope of hours of work, part-time workers may exercise the defined rights in a lesser scope compared to full-time workers. It means that part-time workers enjoy the same employment rights as full-time workers, but proportionally to hours of work the employment contract has been concluded for. This principle is the ‘proportionality principle’ and it covers ‘financial’ rights deriving from employment (salary, allowances/other remuneration, severance pay and similar pays), and also some ‘non-financial’ rights (e.g. the right to annual leave, in the case of part-time workers, at least 10 working days).

The Law on Labour Relations also allows for part-time employment at several employers. Hence, the worker may conclude two or more part-time employment contracts with two or more employers, where the total hours of work at all employers (cumulatively) may not exceed ‘normal’ limitations to hours of work, i.e. the number of hours from full time work being not more than 40 hours of work per week.

Finally, labour legislation also regulates supplementary work, as a form of work where part-time employment contract is concluded with another employer, different from the employer(s) where a worker is employed full-time. Supplementary work is limited to not more than ten hours per week, and is conditioned by consent of employers where the worker is employed full-time.

Home working employment contract

According to the Law on Labour Relations, working at home means the employee undertakes the work at their home or at other premises of their choice, other than the workplace of the employer. Home working employment contracts generally cover work activities and assignments for delivering certain products (e.g. producing certain quantities of textile products on sewing machines, or cutting certain quantities of timber on a woodcutting machine, and similar products), services (e.g. translation of certain number of pages into another language, and similar services), rather than work activities and assignments related to the application of modern information and communication technologies in the typical work process. Yet, in line with the existing labour legislation, there are no obstacles for workers to perform and work by applying ICT at a separate work place (i.e. home). The employer is obligated to submit a home working employment contract to a labour inspector not later than 3 days from the day of contract conclusion.