articles - Labour and employment law

The legal nature of the relationship between a company and its management board (MB) member often has a number of aspects. Primary is the corporate aspect of the appointment to the MB (usually under a resolution of a meeting of shareholders or supervisory board). The second involves a board member’s rights and obligations while working for the company. In the latter, MB members with employment contracts have a specific situation, with the most complicated aspect arising when terminating their employment.

The government’s bill to amend the Labour Code and certain other acts, which seeks to implement solutions provided under EU Directives into Polish legislation[1], may have a significant impact on the employees’ rights and on the corresponding employers’ obligations. The amendment seeks to extend parenthood rights, including by extending parental leave (in the spirit of work-life balance) and to make revolutionary changes in how employment contracts are terminated.

Employers frequently find no need to include provisions in employment contracts that regulate copyrights to work produced by an employee. They rest on the general principle that the employer automatically acquires economic copyrights to work created in the course of performing assigned tasks1 or that the right to them arises to his benefit by law (as in the case of computer software)2. Therefore, regulations in an employment contract are unnecessary. This is obviously true to a certain degree. The devil nevertheless lies in details. If an employer solely rests on statutory provisions, he may...

The shorter a regulation, the more questions and doubts it raises. And so it is in the case of Article 101(2) § 3 of the Labour Code, which regulates the minimum amount of compensation for a non-compete clause (or restrictive covenant) after employment termination. Compensation may not be lower than 25% of the remuneration the employee received before employment termination, for the duration of the competition ban. How this is interpreted is important.   

Employee sickness and absenteeism from work are inherent business risks which the employer has to take into account. An employee's absence from work can be so frequent that it significantly affects the functioning of the workplace. In such situations, it may be in the employer’s interest to terminate such an employee’s employment contract and hire someone else to take their place. Labour Code provisions oblige employers to specify the reason justifying such a decision in the notice terminating indefinite-term contracts (Article 30 § 4 of the Labour Code). Does regular sickness...

An employment contract performed entirely within Poland but concluded with an employer without a registered office in the EU, the EEA or Switzerland may not constitute grounds for mandatory Polish social insurance. This position was adopted by the Social Insurance Institution in an individual interpretation of Polish law.