articles - Labour and employment law

Faced with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a large number of companies are being forced to reduce their workforce. Many employers are required to pay redundant employees severance pay, a one-off benefit to compensate them for the loss of their jobs. This seemingly simple issue raises many practical problems. Additional doubts have emerged with regard to the interpretation of the Anti-Crisis Shield 4.0 provision temporarily limiting the maximum amount of benefits related to employment termination, including severance pay.

In order for an incident to be considered an accident at work, it is necessary to establish its connection with work. In this respect, no serious doubt is raised with respect to an accident suffered by an employee in the performance of his or her duties. However, in some cases, the accident report refers to an accident that occurred in circumstances not directly related to the employee's performance of his or her work, for example during a staff social event. To properly classify such accident, it is necessary to determine whether the event was work-related.

The Labour Code defines mobbing in art. 943 § 1 as action or behaviour pertaining to or directed at an employee in the form of persistent and lengthy harassment or intimidation causing underestimation of professional usefulness or resulting in or intended to humiliate or mock an employee or to isolate or eliminate him or her from a team of co-workers.

The costs of unlawfully dismissing an employee are already high. Reinstatement to work and the former employer’s obligation to pay an employee’s salary for the time when he/she was out of work or, alternatively, compensation, costs of a protracted court case before the labour court (in Poland the judgment in a court of first instance is issued approximately two years after the claim is filed) means that the employer’s defeat in a labour court may be particularly severe for the company (and its budget).

The pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and restrictions that it has evoked has brutally forced employees to review their vacation leave plans. On one hand this was caused, among others, by the closing of borders and mandatory quarantine while, on the other, by the sudden decrease in demand for labour in certain sectors. The availability of certain employees (even remotely) has become imperative for further business, whereas remaining employees have faced the perspective of dismissal or at least mandatory leave. It should be noted that entities conducting business in sectors listed in...

In its paper published on 30 June 2020, the Data Protection Authority (“DPA”) expressed the view that the data of management board members representing a legal person are protected by the GDPR as the data of natural persons who are identifiable by using data disclosed in the National Court Register.