US vs Czech termination rules: at-will meets a closed list

The difference is not the amount of notice or the size of the payment. It is whether a reason is needed at all. Under at-will employment an employer may end the relationship at any time for any reason that is not unlawful, and the reason itself is rarely the thing litigated; what gets tested is whether the real reason was a prohibited one. In the Czech Republic an employer’s notice is valid only if it rests on one of the grounds listed in § 52 zákoníku práce. The list is exhaustive. There is no residual ground, no business-judgment ground and no at-will ground.

That single structural fact reorders everything downstream. The ground has to exist before the conversation, because the notice has to state it factually in a way that cannot be confused with another ground, and it cannot be changed afterwards. A notice must be in writing or it is disregarded. Once given, it can be withdrawn only with the other party’s consent, and both the withdrawal and the consent have to be in writing.

This post is about that contrast and what it does to a US employer’s process. The Czech mechanics themselves, meaning the five ways an employment can end, the individual § 52 grounds, the notice periods and the odstupné ladder, are set out in our post on terminating employment in the Czech Republic, and we will not rebuild them here.

That the decision and the execution can happen close together. A US playbook typically assumes the employer can decide to end a role, notify the person, pay through a final date, and offer a severance sum under a separation agreement in exchange for a release. Documentation exists to defend against a discrimination or retaliation claim rather than to establish that the termination was valid in the first place, and a performance improvement plan is a management tool the employer chooses to run, not a statutory precondition.

Severance follows the same logic. Where it is paid, it is usually paid because the employer wants the release, so its size is negotiable and it can be scaled to the seniority of the person or the sensitivity of the exit. Notice, similarly, is a matter of policy or contract rather than a statutory minimum attached to the reason for leaving.

None of that transfers. In the Czech Republic severance is owed on specified grounds and calculated from length of service, notice length is fixed by which ground was used, and a release signed by the employee does not cure a notice that had no valid ground behind it. A US playbook run unchanged in the Czech Republic tends to fail at the first step rather than the last, because it starts at the decision instead of at the ground.

A ground from the closed list, correctly identified and correctly described. The § 52 grounds run from a) to h) and divide into three families: the employer or part of it is closing or relocating, or the employee has become redundant as a result of an organisational change; the employee has lost the capacity to do the work on a medical opinion, or has reached the maximum permissible exposure at the workplace; or the employee does not meet the statutory prerequisites or the requirements of the job, or has breached their duties.

Which family the ground sits in decides the rest of the file. It sets the minimum notice period, either two months or one. It decides whether odstupné is payable at all. And it decides what has to have happened before the notice is written, which is the part a US employer is least prepared for.

Two procedural duties sit alongside. The employer must discuss any notice or summary termination with the trade union in advance where one operates at the employer. Where the employee is a member of a union body, during their term and for a year afterwards, the employer must ask for prior consent; silence for 15 days counts as consent, and a refusal makes the termination invalid unless a court holds that the employer cannot fairly be required to keep employing the person.

Two of the § 52 grounds have a written precondition built into them, and missing it cannot be repaired later. Where the failure consists of unsatisfactory work results under § 52 písm. f), notice may be given only if the employer has, in the last 12 months, called on the employee in writing to remedy them and the employee has not done so within a reasonable time. Where the case is persistent less serious breaches of duty under § 52 písm. g), notice is possible only if the employee was warned in writing, in the last 6 months, of the possibility of notice in connection with a breach.

A US-style performance improvement plan often contains the substance of both, and still fails to serve as either, because what matters is whether the document called on the employee to remedy the results, or warned of the possibility of notice, and whether it falls inside the 12-month or 6-month window on the day the notice is given.

Disciplinary grounds also run on their own clocks. Notice on § 52 písm. g), and summary termination, must be given within 3 months of the employer learning of the ground and at the latest 15 months after it arose. Notice on § 52 písm. h), which concerns a particularly gross breach of the duty to observe the sickness regime, must be given within 1 month of learning of it and at the latest a year after it arose. An employer that investigates slowly can lose the ground it had.

• Identify the § 52 ground before anything is said to the employee
• Check the written call to remedy is inside 12 months, for work results
• Check the written warning is inside 6 months, for repeated breaches
• Check the 3-month and 15-month limits on disciplinary grounds
• State the ground in the notice factually, and do not change it later

The deadline is short and it is preclusive. Invalidity of a termination by notice, by summary termination, by termination in probation or by agreement may be raised in court no later than 2 months from the day on which the employment should have ended by that termination. It binds employer and employee alike, and once the two months pass the invalidity cannot be raised at all. A separate 2-month deadline applies to a declaration on whether the conditions for a fixed term were met, running from the day the relationship should have ended by expiry.

A US employer reading that tends to relax at the wrong point. The deadline limits when a claim can start; it does nothing to limit what the claim is worth. If the termination is found invalid and the employee has notified the employer in writing that they insist on continued employment, the employment continues, and the employer owes compensation at average earnings, plus leave, from the date of that notification until it lets the employee work again or the employment validly ends. Where the total exceeds 6 months, the court may reduce the compensation for the further period on the employer’s application, having regard to whether the employee worked elsewhere and what they earned.

Where the employee does not give that notification, the employment is treated as having ended by agreement, on expiry of the notice period for an invalid notice, or on the day the termination purported to take effect for an invalid summary or probation termination, with compensation at average earnings for the notice period in those cases.

So the exposure is not a fixed severance multiple. It is a running figure, tied to the length of the litigation and to a judicial discretion that only opens after six months. That is the real reason to get the ground and the paperwork right on the day the notice is issued, and it is the argument that carries most weight with a US finance team.

In probation, and in agreement. A zkušební doba may run to 4 months, or 8 months for a vedoucí zaměstnanec, and since 1 June 2025 those are the limits; a page quoting 3 months and 6 months is describing the law as it stood until 31 May 2025. It must be agreed in writing and no later than the day employment arises, or it does not exist, and on a fixed-term contract it may not exceed half the agreed term. It is extended automatically by any working day on which the employee did not work a full shift.

Inside it, either side may end the employment for any reason or none, in writing, and it ends on the day of delivery unless a later day is stated. The one restriction is that the employer may not do so during the first 14 calendar days of the employee’s temporary incapacity or quarantine. That is the closest thing Czech law has to the at-will position, it is time-limited, and it is lost entirely if the probation was not agreed in writing before the first day. The written-form rules for probation and the rest of the contract are in our post on Czech employment contracts.

The other flexible route is a dohoda o rozvázání pracovního poměru, a termination by agreement, which ends the employment on an agreed day and in writing. It does not need a § 52 ground, though where the agreement is made for a reason that would have carried severance, the severance is still owed, and the 2-month challenge deadline applies to it in the same way as to a notice.

One further change catches US employers planning a finish date. Since 1 June 2025 the notice period begins on the day the notice is delivered and ends on the day of the final month bearing the same number, rather than starting on the first day of the following month. Any plan built on the older rule is a month out. Our post on US companies hiring in the Czech Republic covers what else moves when a US offer becomes a Czech contract, and the employing arrangement itself is described on Employer of Record Czech Republic.

A UK employer reading this will recognise part of the picture and not the rest, because UK law sits between the two on notice and on unfair dismissal. Our post on whether a UK company can hire in the Czech Republic takes that comparison on its own terms.