The Poland Labor Code is the key legal contract between an employer and an employee. Changes to Poland’s labor code came into effect on 7 September 2019. Today, Poland’s labor code protects employees from discrimination, revises policies of issuing employment certificates, and gives parents permission to assign maternity and parental leave entitlements to a family member.

Protection from Discrimination and Bullying in the Workplace
Discrimination is when employees are treated unequally based on unjustifiable reasons that are not objective. Even though Poland’s labor code does not ban a specific type of discrimination, it acknowledges its presence.
Employees who have been bullied no longer need to resign to claim compensation from their bosses.

Employment Certificates
Employment certificates must be issued on the employee’s termination date. However, if there are genuine reasons for the delay in meeting the deadline, the law allows an extra seven days. Work certificates entail information about the former employment relationship.

The work certificate includes dates of employment, the position of the employee, why the contract was terminated, the number of vacation leaves obtained in the final year of employment, and any other absences that are unaccounted for.
There are new deadlines that employees are given to ask for corrections to the certificates and for their employers to get back to them. In case of noncompliance, workers can make a claim against their employer.

Maternity and Parental Leave
Employees are given the right to assign maternity and parental leave to any member within their immediate family. The family member cannot be terminated while they are on maternity or paternity leave. They are also allowed to take a vacation to refresh themselves at the end of the leave time.

Paid Leave
All employees who have been employed for less than 10-years are allowed an annual paid leave of twenty days. This number increases to twenty-six days if the employee has been employed for at least 10-years or more.
Regardless of intervals in employment and how the employer-employee relationship ended, periods of previous employment are taken into consideration to determine the right to leave and how long the length of leave should be.

Unpaid Leave
After taking the employee into consideration and taking written consent, an employer in Poland is allowed to grant unpaid leave to the worker. This period of unpaid leave is not counted as part of the employment period, so it cannot affect the employee’s rights. If an employee is granted unpaid leave for longer than 3-months, the employers are entitled to call the employee back for important, legitimate work.

An agreement can also be made between the employer and employee, where the employer allows his worker to work for another employee at a different company for a period of time. This agreement needs to be in written form and should be concluded between both parties. The period of this leave depends on the employer-employee relationship and how far the employee has worked with his employer.

To learn more about labor and compliance in Poland, click here