1 August 2023

Specially protected employees

On Friday, 28 July 2023, parliamentary work was completed on an amendment to the law on bridging pensions and certain other laws (Sejm Paper no. 3321), which extends the protection of specially protected employees.

Pursuant to the newly introduced art. 755[5] of the Civil Procedure Code, a specially protected employee raising a claim to declare termination of employment ineffective or for reinstatement will be able to obtain security by ordering the employer to employ the employee until the final termination of the proceedings.

Security will only be granted on the basis of the substantiation of the existence of the claim, and a court will only be able to refuse security if the claim is manifestly unfounded.

An employer will be able to request annulment of a final order granting security only if demonstrating that the prerequisites referred to in art. 52 § 1 of the Labour Code (i.e. allowing the employer to terminate an employment contract without notice due to employee fault: grave breach of basic employment duties; committed crime making it impossible to continue employment in the occupied position if the crime is obvious or has been established by a final judgment; loss of qualifications necessary to work in the occupied position due to the employee's fault) occurred after the security was granted.

Art. 477[2] § 2 of the Civil Procedure Code has also been reworded: if a court finds that termination of an employment contract was ineffective, it will, at the employee's request, require the employer in a judgment to continue employing the employee until proceedings are final (previously, a court could impose such an obligation on the employer, but was not obligated to do so).

The Act will now await the President's signature. If President signs the Act, the aforementioned provisions will become effective 30 days after publication of the Act in the Journal of Laws.

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