articles - Labour and employment law

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.

A condition for calling a strike in a collective labour dispute is to obtain the approval of the employees through a strike referendum. The Act on Resolution of Collective Disputes gives only limited indications of the rules under which such a referendum should be conducted.

Employers intending to hire a foreigner who has yet to obtain the documents required by law to legalise the person’s work and stay in Poland often wonder how to establish the starting date in the employment contract. Under the Labour Code, setting the start date is a mandatory element of an employment contract. At the same time, however, it may be difficult to set a specific date for the start of work, or even impossible, in a situation where the parties do not know and cannot predict when the foreigner will receive the legally required documents (which happens more and more frequently,...