articles - Labour and employment law

The upcoming amendment to the Labour Code on remote work is expected to comprehensively regulate a number of issues and relationships between employer and employee, significantly changing the existing legal landscape for performing work from home. The amendment also touches on issues of processing of personal data.

A bill entitled the Act on Specific Solutions Facilitating Business Operations During the COVID-19 Epidemic has been filed with the Sejm. It would allow employers in Poland to demand information from employees about COVID-19 test results, having undergone a COVID-19 infection, or vaccination against COVID-19.

According to the proposal, an employer would be entitled to demand information from an employee or a person in a civil-law relationship (e.g. a contractor) to the effect that the person has obtained a negative COVID-19 test within 48 hours before submission of the information.

Work is underway on a bill implementing the EU’s Whistleblower Directive (2019/1937). It is not yet clear whether the directive will be implemented into Polish law on time (by 17 December 2021), but many companies are already drafting the necessary documents and organisational procedures.

The image of a natural person is a protected right. In Poland, it is subject to protection as a personal data, right to personality , but is also subject to copyright protection. Each of these regulations has a somewhat different presumption and terms of image use. An employer, in seeking to use the image of an employee in advertising, must ensure to meet requirements imposed by each of these regimes as well as observe requirements specified by all legal provisions applied in this regard. In this article we seek to address questions concerning copyright principles under which an employer...

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.