flash news - Labour and employment law

On 1 July 2022, a further amendment was announced to the Act on Assistance to Citizens of Ukraine in Connection with the Armed Conflict on the Territory of the Country. The amendment gives an additional 14 days for the submission of notifications on giving work to Ukrainian nationals and their family members if, for some reason, these notifications were not submitted earlier. This new deadline runs from the amendment’s entry into force, namely from 2 July 2022. It follows that a notification may be submitted up to and including 16 July. However, this deadline falls on a Saturday, and there is no information on the government’s website as to whether the deadline is therefore extended to Monday, and whether the system will allow notifications to be submitted on Monday. As a precaution, we advise against delaying with submitting such notifications.

On 20 June 2022, a Draft Regulation of the Minister of Finance on the manner of drafting and transmission of information on participants of occupational pension schemes and its template of 14 June 2022 (bill number: 551) was published on the website of the Government Legislation Centre. Under the draft, the administrator (financial institution or pension fund) should establish information on a participant of a occupational pension scheme:

• on a permanent medium suitable to be preserved for a period compatible with the purpose for which information contained therein is collected,
• in such form that it can be amended,
• in such form that preserved information can be retrieved unchanged.

On 6 June 2022, the Draft Act amending the Labour Code and certain other acts of 3 June 2022 (bill number: UC118) was published on the website of the Government Legislation Centre. It is intended to introduce numerous changes to the Labour Code concerning work-life balance. One proposed change is the ability to permit parental leave for  employees - parents of a child with a certificate stating a severe and irreversible handicap or incurable life-threatening disease which arose during the prenatal period of the child's development or during childbirth for the purpose of caring for that child and in the scope of up to:

• 65 weeks (in the case of giving birth to one child in one birth)
• 67 weeks (in the case of giving birth to two to five children in one birth).

March, employers may use a simplified procedure for legalizing the work of a Ukrainian citizen. Nevertheless, in a latest amendment, legislators have abandoned the earlier simplification and now require employers to declare in their notifications the levels of remuneration, working hours and the numbers of all persons working under  employment contracts and under civil law contracts as at 23 February 2022 and as at the date of filing the notification.

Even though the deadline for implementing the EU Whistleblowing Directive (17 December 2021) has already passed, legislative work on the Polish Act on Whistleblowers is still continuing. After receiving a significant number of critical comments, today (12 April), the Ministry of Family and Social Policy announced a second draft implementing bill. The new draft bill differs significantly from the preceding one. In particular, Polish legislators have withdrawn the idea of anonymous reporting (unless allowed under special statutory provisions, which the new Act on Whistleblowers is only intended to supplement), and also eased sanctions for not having internal reporting procedures in place (currently, failure to comply with this duty is subject only to a fine).

A draft bill on amending the Labour Code and certain other acts has been published (bill number: UC118) in the schedule of legislative and agenda tasks of the Council of Ministers. The bill aims to implement Directives 2019/1152 (on transparent and predictable working conditions in the European Union) and 2019/1158 (the work-life balance directive) into Polish legal system and to introduce amendments that would ensure that provisions on terminating definite term employment contracts fully comply with Directive 1999/70/EC.