Bigdowska - Labour and employment law

In practice, it may happen that an employee, who is within a period of notice, seriously breaches basic duties, giving the employer grounds to terminate the employment contract without notice (a disciplinary dismissal). In such case, the employer will not have to wait for the period of notice to expire: the employer will be able to terminate the contract immediately due to a fault of the employee, without having to withdraw the earlier notice of termination.

Nevertheless, such a decision carries significant legal consequences as the employee may appeal against both the notice of termination and the disciplinary dismissal. Furthermore, the only provision of the Labour Code that explicitly governs the effects of an immediate termination of employment due to a fault of the employee within a period of notice is Article 60 of LC, and it does not cover all possible situations. Below, we discuss common scenarios and their practical implications for employers.

The principle of non-discrimination has been in force in Polish labour law for over 20 years. At the same time, there is a noticeable tendency to specify and expand provisions in this area. Soon, on 24 December 2025, the principle of non-discrimination will be reinforced once again – by adding art. 18^3ca to the Labour Code. The adoption of art. 18^3ca LC relates to partial implementation of European Parliament and Council (EU) Directive 2023/970.

This provision introduces rules on transparency regarding remuneration at the recruitment stage. However, it also stipulates that: The employer shall ensure that job advertisements and job titles are gender-neutral and that the recruitment process is non-discriminatory. We focus in this article on new duties of employers in this regard.

The holiday season can cause considerable organisational challenges for employers. On the one hand, they should provide employees with time to rest, while on the other, they must ensure there is no interruption of operations, such as key business processes and customer service.

Helping employees to raise their professional qualifications is a basic duty of employers and is also one of the cornerstones of labour law. Employee training is an integral part of today’s labour market, in which technological developments and the associated changes in how work is organised are, essentially, forcing upskilling and retraining. This topic is also particularly relevant to the policies that employers draw up, which increasingly offer subsidised training to employees as a benefit encouraging them accept offers of jobs or to remain in employment.

In the current Polish labour market, disclosure of salaries by employers is standard only in certain industries, particularly in the IT sector. Many employers do not disclose salary information to protect company secrets. Hence, it appears, that the norm is not to disclose salary ranges in recruitment advertisements, use of salary secrecy provisions and for employers to increasingly rarely set pay grades, which translates into less disclosure of salaries in organisations.

Infertility treatment using the in vitro method entails costs which, due to non-reimbursement by the National Health Fund, for many people constitutes an enormous expense, often impossible to cover with own funds. Although there are local government support programmes in some Polish cities, subsidies that can be obtained from them do not cover all costs and apply only to selected groups of people.