Intensive works on important employment-related changes are being underway. They will have a significant impact on conducting business activities by employers. Those changes include:

– increase in the minimum wage

The Council of Ministers has published information on a planned increase in the minimum monthly wage and the minimum hourly rate that should be granted to some civil law contractors in 2021.

The government’s proposal for the new minimum wage is PLN 2,800 and the proposal for the new hourly rate is PLN 18,30.

The increase will have a profound effect on the costs incurred by employers, since the minimum wage is used as a basis for calculating many other benefits paid to employees, including the maximum amount of redundancy pay due under the Act on Group Redundancies.

A final decision on the minimum wage will be made in the coming weeks.

– implementation of the European directive regulating posting of employees

Work is in progress to implement directive 2018/957/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 June 2018 amending directive 96/71/WE regulating the posting of employees in the framework of the provision of services. To this end, the period for which employees may be posted will be specified; in accordance with the EU laws the maximum period of posting may be up to 12 months (this period can be extended up to 18 months). After the expiry of the permitted posting period, employers will have to apply most of the labour law regulations in effect in the host country in relation to posted employees. This is intended to guarantee the same working conditions to posted employees as those offered to  local employees.

– introduction of remote working to the Labour Code

In connection with combating COVID-19 spread, Polish employers are allowed to instruct their employees to work – for a specific period of time – outside their regular place of work without making any changes to the existing employment agreements or obtaining prior consent of the employee. Even though such possibility is going to end on 4 September 2020, according to the recent statement of the Polish Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy we should expect an announcement within the next few weeks of the introduction of new principles to the Polish Labour Code that will allow employees and employers to benefit from remote working.

In the following entries we will provide  you with more information about the new laws and their potential impact on your business.