articles - Labour and employment law

Many employers believe that they have the right to require their employees to provide information on their disability. This is because employers have an obligation to ensure that employees with disabilities can exercise particular privileges. The Personal Data Protection Office ('PDPO') examined this issue in its position paper published on 24 August 2020, where it reminded that it is up to the employee to decide whether or not to provide such information.

The Act dated 31 March 2020, namely the so-called Anti-Crisis Shield 1.0, introduced a series of new provisions to the Act dated 2 March 2020 on specific solutions associated with the prevention and countering of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, other contagious diseases and the crisis situations they cause (hereafter the Special Law). Its main purpose was to primarily enable employers to retain work positions during suspension of activity or reduction of revenues. It also includes important provisions on extension of the validity of judgments regarding disability, degree of disability and inability to...

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).