articles - Labour and employment law

Employers frequently find no need to include provisions in employment contracts that regulate copyrights to work produced by an employee. They rest on the general principle that the employer automatically acquires economic copyrights to work created in the course of performing assigned tasks1 or that the right to them arises to his benefit by law (as in the case of computer software)2. Therefore, regulations in an employment contract are unnecessary. This is obviously true to a certain degree. The devil nevertheless lies in details. If an employer solely rests on statutory provisions, he may...

The shorter a regulation, the more questions and doubts it raises. And so it is in the case of Article 101(2) § 3 of the Labour Code, which regulates the minimum amount of compensation for a non-compete clause (or restrictive covenant) after employment termination. Compensation may not be lower than 25% of the remuneration the employee received before employment termination, for the duration of the competition ban. How this is interpreted is important.   

Employee sickness and absenteeism from work are inherent business risks which the employer has to take into account. An employee's absence from work can be so frequent that it significantly affects the functioning of the workplace. In such situations, it may be in the employer’s interest to terminate such an employee’s employment contract and hire someone else to take their place. Labour Code provisions oblige employers to specify the reason justifying such a decision in the notice terminating indefinite-term contracts (Article 30 § 4 of the Labour Code). Does regular sickness...

At present, a change of work does not constitute any kind of extraordinary situation, with foreign citizens not being an exception to this. However, they do not all have unlimited access to the labour market. Quite the contrary: employment is often dependent on prior acquisition of a work permit. And what happens in situations where a change of employer takes place in the course of proceedings to obtain a permit for temporary residence and work? What are the changes that do not require a change to a decision and what are the ones requiring the lodging of a respective motion? And finally, is...

From 1 January 2021, payers of contributions and individuals commissioning work will be obliged to inform ZUS, (Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych, Poland’s social insurance institution) about concluding specific-task contracts (umowy o dzieło) that are not subject to social security and health insurance contributions. Thanks to this new obligation, ZUS will be able to verify the existence of the social security obligation of persons performing specific-task contracts. However, this brief regulation may raise many practical reservations.

Given the nature of their function, management board members take key business decisions. They have access to confidential information, including trade secrets whose disclosure or misuse could expose the company to a loss.