Ewelina Kumor-Jezierska

Employee documentation – new regulations

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the changes of carrying out and storing employee documentation, which have been in force starting from January 1st, 2019. The implemented changes not only make it possible to carry out the documentation in an electronic form, but they also modify the employer’s rights in the scope of employee documentation storage. One of the most important changes is the shortening of the employee documentation storage from 50 to 10 years, starting from the end of the calendar year, in which the employment relationship was terminated or ended, unless separate regulations specify a longer storage period. New regulations of the labour code and the ordinance of December 10th, 2018 on employee documentation specify the rules pertaining to how to carry out and store employee documentation, among other things regulate the questions connected with issuing copies of employee documentation, picking up the documentation after the period of its storage had lapsed by persons entitled to do it as well as issues related to employee documentation destruction in the case it was not picked up.

Criminal liability for lack of payment of remuneration for posted worker

This article deals with the misdemeanour liability which may be imposed in the event of a lack of payment of a remuneration to a posting worker when a due amount of money for such a remuneration is regulated by a Member Stater other than Poland. The authors analyse the aforementioned problem from the perspective of the Polish misdemeanour law. Having done so, the authors have perceived two problems: lex loci of an act and availability of an interpretation of a legal penalizing norm stemming from the EU directive. The former problem was solved by accepting the proposition that lex loci for a negligent default of payment of a remuneration by an employer of a posting worker is always the country of her principal office which in practise is always the country from which a posting worker is being posted. The latter, by accepting the proposition that a regulation on remuneration for posting workers, which is a body of law of a foreign country, should be deemed as comprising of overriding mandatory provisions, in turn those provisions may be used to interpret a legal norm encompassed with a misdemeanour sanction because those overriding mandatory provisions have theirs base in the EU law that is part the Polish legal system. 

ASJC: 3308, JEL: J53

* Niniejszy artykuł w zakresie współautorstwa Jakuba Grygutisa powstał w ramach projektu badawczego pod nazwą „Diamentowy Grant”, sfinansowanego ze środków budżetowych na naukę w latach 2017–2020, nr projektu: 321691. 

Extended unpaid parental leave as the period of employment (not) favourable to parent employee. Conclusions de lege lata and de lege ferenda

Employees have different caring responsibilities at different stages of their life, some take care of the children, others of sick members of their family. For some years now, there have been attempts to find solutions how to resolve the key problem, which is the uneven participation of men and women in childcare, as well as in the care over other dependants. However, currently, an employee taking advantage of extended unpaid parental leave gets neither remuneration from the employment relationship nor maternity allowance, which results in the fact that most fathers still do not make use of their right to extended unpaid parental leave. Often, neither of the parents benefits from this entitlement, but they return to work right after the paid parental leave. The purpose of extended unpaid parental leave, just like in the case of other parent-related leaves of absence, is to take personal care of the child. Currently, there are a few solutions whose aim is to make it easier to the parents to combine their private and professional life. The possibility to undertake additional activities during the extended unpaid parental leave is one of them. According to the Labour Code regulations, an employee can undertake gainful employment or other activity at his/her existing or a new employer or can undertake some studying or training when he/she takes advantage of the extended unpaid parental leave on condition that it does not exclude the possibility to take personal care of the child (Art. 1862 § 1 of the Labour Code). Implementing the directive (UE) 2019/1158 into the national legal order might be an excellent opportunity to modify the already existing institution of the extended unpaid parental leave. The essential novum which the directive will introduce, and which is to encourage the fathers to take care of the children, is to entitle the working parents to two months of parental leave that is not transferrable to the other parent of the child. Certainly, financial aspects will be of significance to the parents. Therefore, it is essential that the state budget covers the two months of obligatory parental leave benefits which are solely dedicated to the fathers of the children.

ASJC: 3308, JEL: K31

Transgression against employees’ rights: The analysis and the demands of de lege ferenda

Employment certificate: selected problems

The purpose of the article is to draw attention to the selected problems pertaining to the proper issue of the employment certificate with regard to the recent changes that have entered into force. In a situation when an employment relationship has ended, every employer has a legal obligation to issue an employment certificate. It is a document containing information necessary to establish employees’rights in the next place of employment, with pension authorities or in a job center. Starting from 1 January 2019 the employer, apart from an employment certificate, is also obliged to render to the employee, either in a paper or an electronic form, information on: the period of legal documentation storage, the possibility to receive employee documentation till the end of a calendar month following the lapse of time of employee documentation storage as well as information on employee documentation destruction in the case it was not picked up within the prescribed period.

ASJC: 3308, JEL: K31