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The law protects employees who are absent due to illness from dismissal, if they return to work before the end of the period set down in law. Only a sufficiently long and, in principle, uninterrupted absence due to sickness allows the employer to terminate the contract immediately with an employee who is unfit to work. As a result, situations arise, in practice, in which employees take sick leave “on and off”, interrupting long periods of absence by returning for a few days to work. On the one hand, this is supposed to guarantee further protection against dismissal while, on the other, to ensure that the benefit for being unable to work is received for as long as possible. Nevertheless, it turns out that this strategy will not always prevent the employer from letting the employee go.
When an employee has been absent for a long period of time, or in other circumstances where an employer is having difficulties contacting an employee via official means of communication, HR departments often wonder whether they can use an employee's private contact data. Some more cautious employers introduce employee questionnaires requesting a private e-mail address or telephone number, or collect this data from employees in a different way. How does the issue of obtaining private contact data look from a data protection law perspective?
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.
On 24 April 2024, the European Parliament adopted new legislation to improve the working conditions of online platform workers. It is set out in the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on improving working conditions on online platforms. As many as 554 MEPs voted in favour of the Directive (56 voted against and 24 abstained).
Purpose of the Directive
The Directive aims to improve the working conditions of online platform workers and provide them with protection by ensuring that their employment status is properly established through introducing a presumption of employment and establishing minimum rights applicable to anyone working through online platforms in the EU.
Ukrainian nationals have long been the most numerous group of foreigners working in Poland. Their share of the Polish labour market has risen further due to the war in Ukraine. As a result of the hostilities, some Ukrainians decided to leave the country to seek refuge in other states, including, to a significant extent, in Poland. A report of the Central Statistical Office dated 5 August 2024 shows that 690,200 Ukrainian citizens were working in Poland at the end of February 2024.
In the Polish legal system, giving work to a foreigner who has not been authorised to undertake it, entails a liability for the employer. At present, Article 120 par. 1 of the Act on the Promotion of Employment and on Labour Market Institutions envisages a fine for illegally employing a foreigner. The fine may range from PLN 1,000 to PLN 30,000.
Amendments are now being planned to limit the extent of an employers’ liability, by changing the requirements for liability under this petty offence. The proposed amendments have been accepted by the Council of Ministers and are currently at the consultation stage.