flash news
On 15 December, the Senate adopted an amendment to the Labour Code and certain other acts (on remote working and sobriety control) with the following amendments:
- occasional remote working will be allowed for 30 days per calendar year (rather than 24 days),
- a parent of a child up to the age of 10 (rather than up to the age of 4) will be able to request remote working and the employer will, in principle, have to grant such a request,
- employees with disabilities will also be able to request remote working and the employer will, in principle, have to grant such a request,
- there will be a longer vacatio legis for certain provisions of the Act, including provisions introducing remote working as envisaged by the Code – 3 months (rather than 2 months) after its public announcement.
The draft amendment will now go back to the Sejm (lower house of Parliament), which can either support or reject the Senate's amendments.
On 1 December, the Sejm (lower house of Parliament) passed a bill amending the Labour Code and certain other acts. Remote work will now appear in the Labour Code, defined as work performed wholly or partly at a location specified by the employee and agreed each time with the employer, including at the employee’s home address, in particular using means of direct distance communication.
On 15 November 2022, the second reading of the government’s bill on an ICT system to be used for certain contracts (no. 2766) was held. The draft bill applies to employers and mandators that are:
- micro-entrepreneurs/non-micro-entrepreneurs employing not more than 9 people,
- farmers in the meaning of the Act on Social Insurance for Farmers, dated 20 December 1990, and
- natural persons who are neither entrepreneurs nor farmers.
A bill (no 2642) providing for the addition of point 5 to the current Article 28(1) of the Trade Union Act of 23 May 1991 is currently under deliberation in the lower house of parliament (Sejm). According to the new provision, the employer will be obliged, at the request of a company trade union to provide information on: "parameters, rules and instructions on which algorithms or artificial intelligence systems are based, which influence decision-making and which may affect working and pay conditions, access to employment and its maintenance, including profiling".
The proposed amendment is expected to enter into force 14 days after publication.
Legislative stage: the bill was referred to committee for its first reading.
Work is underway on a draft bill on professional activity (list number: UD399). Its proposals are to replace the current Act of 20 April 2004 on employment promotion and labour market institutions starting on 1 January 2023.
On 22 September 2022, a parliamentary draft law amending certain bills to establish a 35-hour work week was published on the Sejm website.
This draft law regarding amendments to the Labour Code provides for a gradual reduction of the weekly work time norm from an average of 40 hours to an average of 35 hours, while maintaining the current level of remuneration. On the other hand, weekly work time, including overtime hours, is not expected to exceed an average of 43 hours in the adopted reference period.