flash news: #equal treatment
The Ministry of Labour is preparing a bill which will comprehensively implement the provisions of the EU Pay Transparency Directive into Polish law. In accordance with the objectives of the bill, which we wrote about on our portal, it will be the duty of every employer to assess jobs using at least four criteria: skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. The ministry has prepared two instruments to help implement the obligation, in particular, for small and medium-sized employers (although the instruments are intended to all organisations).
A new draft amendment to provisions on mobbing has been published. According to its provisions:
- compensation for harm suffered in connection with repeated infringements of the principle of equal treatment towards an employee (repeated infringements for the same reason or for multiple reasons, or a single infringement for multiple reasons at the same time) will amount to at least three times the minimum wage (from 2026 - PLN 14,418)
The Minister of Labour, Family and Social Policy has signed a regulation which eases formalities for women employees who have had a loss of pregnancy. Until now, the regulations did not allow women to take shortened maternity leave, if they were unable to identify their child’s sex.
The Ministry of Family, Labor, and Social Policy is completing an analysis of comments on a draft amendment to the legislation on mobbing.
The second reading of the parliamentary proposal for the salary transparency bill is envisaged even in the next parliamentary session in the Sejm (at the beginning of May). We discussed the original version of the bill in an article on our website. In April, a Sejm subcommittee approved a new, shorter version of the bill, drawn up in consultation with officials at the Ministry of Family, Labour, and Social Policy.
A non-binary person was dismissed from their job at a casino after refusing to comply with the employer’s dress code (heavy make-up, painted nails, elegant high-heeled shoes). The employer was sued for, among other things, compensation for breaching the principle of equal treatment in employment, as male employees in a similar position were only required to have a "neat appearance" – male croupiers could have stubble or long hair at work.