articles - Labour and employment law

A common phenomenon on the Polish labour market is for an employee to establish an individual business and then pass from an employment contract to a cooperation agreement between business entities (B2B contract). But when deciding to modify their form of cooperation, the parties must ensure that the new legal relationship is framed in compliance with its proper classification.

Determining whether a work created by an employee is an employee work for copyright purposes has serious practical consequences. The use of the employer’s equipment or materials doesn’t necessarily mean that a work is an employee work. Similarly, the employee’s use of his own equipment or materials doesn’t automatically mean that the work is not an employee work. Warsaw Court of Appeal judgment of 20 June 2018 (case no. I ACa 18/17)  

Our blog is for everyone professionally involved with labour law and human resources. The profile of employment law is clearly rising. The complexity of issues presented in this field is also growing. It can be said without exaggeration that nearly everything in business revolves around employees. Apart from inflation in the regulations, this is affected by changes in society and civilisation, including demographics, increased mobility of workers, and growth of new technologies. 

Polish employers sending workers on foreign business trips more and more often have legitimate doubts whether they should apply for an A1 certificate for such staff. This is a document required in the case of posting of workers, confirming that they are covered by the social security legislation of the given jurisdiction. The problem mainly involves how to understand the notion of “posting” as used in European rules for coordination of social security systems, which govern the issuance of A1 certificates.

Since January 2019, employers may keep their employees’ records in electronic versions. However, labour law regulations do not define the concept of electronic version. Nonetheless, certain guidelines are to be found in the provisions of the Labour Code and the regulation dated 10 December 2018 of the Minister of the Family, Labour and Social Policy on employee documentation specifying the requirements related to changing the version of employee documentation from paper to electronic.

Amendments to the Polish Labour Code in force since May 2019 resolved the existing doubts as to the admissibility of obtaining employees’ consent to processing of their personal data by employers. Before, the courts had held quite clearly that if an employee’s consent to processing of his personal data were considered a circumstance legalising the gathering of personal data from an employee other than those specified in Art. 221 of the Labour Code, that would constitute a breach of that provision and a circumvention of the law (Supreme Administrative Court judgments of 1 December...