articles - Labour and employment law

The Labour Code stipulates time limits after which an employer’s claims expire for remedy of damage inflicted by an employee due to failure to perform or improper performance of employee duties. Under Art. 291 § 2 of the Labour Code, claims of this kind expire one year from the day on which the employer became aware of the damage done by an employee, but no more than three years from the time the damage was inflicted. It is not entirely clear when these periods should be considered to start.  

Under the Labour Code (Art. 100 § 2(6)), an employee has a duty to abide by the principles of community life, but what does this entail?  

After amendment of the Unfair Competition Act, should a nondisclosure obligation be provided explicitly in an employment contract for when an employee leaves?  

Some time has passed since the Polish Labour Code was adjusted to the provisions of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, but some issues remain unclear. Problems with interpretation of the provisions arise at the stage of recruitment and determining which personal data of candidates may be collected and processed by prospective employees. Doubts are raised for example by the issue of the permissibility of obtaining residential addresses from job applicants.

Whistleblowers are individuals who voluntarily and in good faith report or disclose information about abuse, contributing to the prevention of harm and the detection of public-interest risks and threats that would otherwise remain undetected. Although national institutions and bodies, as well as social organisations, have repeatedly raised the need for regulations to protect such persons, Poland has not yet developed a comprehensive regulation to protect whistleblowers. This is expected to change in the near future, as on 7 October 2019 the Council of the European Union adopted the...

The reform of Poland’s Civil Procedure Code which entered into force on 7 November 2019 introduced changes in the separate procedure for labour-law cases, mostly deriving from changes in the general procedure.