articles - Labour and employment law

Since January 2019, employers may keep their employees’ records in electronic versions. However, labour law regulations do not define the concept of electronic version. Nonetheless, certain guidelines are to be found in the provisions of the Labour Code and the regulation dated 10 December 2018 of the Minister of the Family, Labour and Social Policy on employee documentation specifying the requirements related to changing the version of employee documentation from paper to electronic.

Amendments to the Polish Labour Code in force since May 2019 resolved the existing doubts as to the admissibility of obtaining employees’ consent to processing of their personal data by employers. Before, the courts had held quite clearly that if an employee’s consent to processing of his personal data were considered a circumstance legalising the gathering of personal data from an employee other than those specified in Art. 221 of the Labour Code, that would constitute a breach of that provision and a circumvention of the law (Supreme Administrative Court judgments of 1 December...

A major change to the Labour Code entered into force on 7 September 2019, making it easier for employees to pursue claims for mobbing. Under Art. 943 of the Polish Labour Code, an employee may seek compensation (zadośćuczynienie) for a detriment to the employee’s health caused by mobbing, as well as damages (odszkodowanie) in an amount no less than the minimum wage. But previously, as a condition for seeking damages, the employee had to terminate the employment on the grounds of mobbing.

In the case of a foreigner who has lost or not yet obtained rights to work and stay in Poland, the issues of conclusion and termination of the employment contract and setting the starting date for work (discussed in earlier blog posts) largely boil down in practice to the issue of the employer’s obligation to pay salary to such an employee. This issue is basically resolved in its entirety by the applicable regulations.

Art. 42 §4 of the Polish Labour Code grants the employer broad authority to modify employees’ working conditions. It permits the employer to assign work to the employee different from that originally agreed. But this possibility is subject to many limitations. The employer thus may assign different work to the employee only when: A legitimate need arises on the part of the employer The period of assignment of different work does not exceed three months within a calendar year Assignment of different work will not reduce the employee’s pay, and The assigned work is suited to the...

Employers often have trouble selecting the type of contract for a foreigner. This is because the documents allowing foreigners to work and stay in Poland typically are issued for fixed periods. At the same time, the regulations do not provide any special conditions for employment contracts with foreigners. In particular, Polish law does not contain any regulations excluding or limiting the use of any of the various types of contracts in the case of foreigners.