Żukowska - Labour and employment law

Since 16 July 2020, companies transferring personal data from the EU to the US, including employees' personal data, have had a difficult nut to crack. The Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated the decision in the Privacy Shield case, depriving companies of the possibility of basing data transfers to the US on this basis. However, the Court's judgment (so-called Schrems II) may have serious consequences for companies transferring data to other countries outside the European Economic Area as well.

GDPR rules require certain entities to appoint a Data Protection Officer. Where an organisation considers that such an obligation does not apply to it, it should properly document this.

Since January 2019, employers may keep their employees’ records in electronic versions. However, labour law regulations do not define the concept of electronic version. Nonetheless, certain guidelines are to be found in the provisions of the Labour Code and the regulation dated 10 December 2018 of the Minister of the Family, Labour and Social Policy on employee documentation specifying the requirements related to changing the version of employee documentation from paper to electronic.

Amendments to the Polish Labour Code in force since May 2019 resolved the existing doubts as to the admissibility of obtaining employees’ consent to processing of their personal data by employers. Before, the courts had held quite clearly that if an employee’s consent to processing of his personal data were considered a circumstance legalising the gathering of personal data from an employee other than those specified in Art. 221 of the Labour Code, that would constitute a breach of that provision and a circumvention of the law (Supreme Administrative Court judgments of 1 December...