All Lithuanian and foreign residents employed by Lithuanian registered companies must conclude written employment contracts (for definite or indefinite period), sample form of which is provided by the labour legislation. A foreign resident, who is required to obtain a work permit, must conclude a standard form employment contract. The concluded employment contract must be recorded in the Registrar of the Employment Contracts at the same day of it signature. Before the commencement of work the employer must provide employee with the standard form work certificate and second version of the signed employment contract. The employer must get familiar the employee with the work conditions, local labour rules and other local acts in effect related to the employee’s work.

The employment contract should contain the following main conditions of the work agreed:

- Working place of the employee (e.g., company or department);

- Work duties – certain profession, speciality, qualifications or certain position;

- Work payment conditions.

The parties of the employment contract may agree with respect to other conditions (trial period, liability, etc.) which are not in contradiction to labour laws.

Trial period for new employees may be established and, as a general rule, it cannot be longer than 3 months. In certain cases established by the Lithuanian laws the trial period may be 6 months.

Illegal work

According to the Lithuanian labour legislation, any work performed in the Lithuanian registered companies must be performed under a written employment contract concluded between an individual and a company, including branches and representative offices. This provision does not apply to individuals working under the royalty (copyright) contracts and individuals, who have obtained business certificates (i.e., sole traders). Service contracts between individuals and employers have been revoked by the legislation.

Work is defined as illegal:

qWhen an employment contract is not concluded between employee and employer except the cases specifically mentioned in the laws;

qWhen work is performed by an expatriate not complying with the requirements set forth by the legislation.

General working conditions

As a general rule, minimum annual paid vacation leave is 28 calendar days per year, including weekends but excluding public holidays.

A standard working week is 40 hours, but a shorter period may be negotiated. The maximum working time including overtime cannot exceed 48 hours during 7 days period. A work day of employees working under two or more employment contracts cannot exceed 12 hours. The employer may nominate employee to work overtime only in exceptional cases like accidents, completion of work started if termination of the work may cause haywire of materials or equipments, load and off-load cargoes, etc. The overtime cannot exceed 4 hours during two days period in turn and 120 hours during a year. Overtime is not applicable to the higher level employees listed in the local labour rules or collective agreements. A five-day workweek is the standard one established by the labour legislation, but it may be extended to six days workweek.

Work payment directly relates to the work performed/time spent. The minimum monthly salary must not be less than officially set by the Government, which currently amounts to Litas 430 (EUR 124,54). The minimum hourly pay is currently set at Litas 2,53 (EUR 0,73). The salary must be paid twice per month or once per month if there is a written employee’s request.

Overtime and nighttimes work from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. is paid applying a coefficient of 1.5 to the regular salary. Work performed during the public holidays and weekends are paid twice as much as regularly or upon request of employee compensated by additional day-off. The work in harmful and unhealthy conditions should also be paid higher than regular. The specific coefficients for work in harmful and unhealthy conditions to be set in collective agreements or employment contracts.

Dismissal of employees

Grounds and procedures for dismissal of employees are set out in the Labour Code of the Republic of Lithuania (No IX-926). The employer may terminate an employment contract with the employee concluded for indefinite period only due to the substantial reasons, i.e. reasons related to employee’s qualification, professional abilities, behaviour at work as well as technological, economical, structural reorganization reasons and the like. Dismissal of the employee having no his/her fault is allowed only if there is no possibility to displace he/she to other job (consent of employee for such displacement is required). The employee to be dismissed at the employer’s initiative must be warned with 2-month advance notice. Certain categories of employees (disabled, having children up to 14 years, etc.) require 4-month advance notice.

The usual compensation when dismissing the employee amounts to employee’s average salary, which have to be increased depending on the months spent with a company:

Up to 12 months –1 average salary;

From 12 to 36 months – 2 average salaries;

From 36 to 60 months – 3 average salaries;

From 60 to 120 months – 4 average salaries;

From 120 to 240 months – 5 average salaries;

More than 240 months – 6 average salaries.

Employers are also required to notify local labour exchange, municipality and employees’ representatives on dismissal of employees 2 months before the expected dismissal when it is expected to dismiss the following groups of employees within 30 calendar days period:

q10 and more when the company employs up to 99 employees;

qmore than 10% when the company employs from 100 to 299 employees;

q30 and more when the company employs 300 and more employees.

 

 

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Work and employment in Lithuania

 

To go further

ilo.org/ifpdial/... - Panorama of the Lithuanian labor law

ilo.org/dyn/natlex/... - - NATLEX, database of national labour, social security and related human rights legislation for Lithuania