The subject of the analyses are the latest changes in the Labour Code relating to fixed term employment contracts. The most important change is the limitation of the period of employment of the employee with the employer on the basis of a fixed term employment contract, a total of 33 months and three contracts. This regulation may be less effective due to its non-applicability, if justified by "objective reasons" concerning the employer. A positive change for employees is an equal period of notice for both fixed and permanent employment contracts. In contrast, the progressive destabilization of the temporary employment, due to the possibility of the termination of any fixed term employment contract, should be assessed negatively. The amendment to the Labour Code has not had an impact on the identity of a fixed term employment contract, which is established by a lack of the employer’s obligation to justify the termination of such contract.

On February 22, 2016 the new law which brought substantial changes in Chapter II, Part I of Labour Code entered into force. The main changes concern the contracts of employment concluded for a specific period of time. The amendment abrogates employment contract for a specified task. Furthermore, it provides with details of socio-economic purposes of probation contracts as well as regulates and clarifies the rules of re-employing the worker after the probation contract.

However, the main changes concern contracts for specified period of time and implementation of new legal measures the aim of which is to prevent its excessive use by employers. In here we should mention the basis of employment, exception to legal regulations, admissibility of contracts termination before the statutory period of time and the length of the notice period.

Parental leave after Labour Code amendment

The Act of 24 July 2015 amending the Labour Code has introduced numerous alterations to section eight regulating rights of employees’ relating to parenthood. Parental leave is one of those legal institutions, in the scope of which most alterations have been made. The amendment concerns both, the length of parental leave and the rules of use of the leave in question. The study presents parental leave in its legal shape made by the above mentioned amending act.

Evolution of parental leave

The latest amendment made to the Labour Code introduces significant simplifications to parental rights. It changes the persons who are entitled to parental leave and how certain parts of parental leave are used. Additional maternity leave is now absorbed by parental leave. The legislature has extended the period of the leave until the child reaches the age of 6, which directly affects theamount of the parental leave. Therefore currently parental leave has now become more akin with child care leave. The Labour Code has also introduced the potential to proportionally extend parental leave in connection with the employee’s annual leave at the same employer. Parental leave is granted at the written request of the employee submitted no less than 21 days before the commencement of the leave. The employee may opt out of the use of parental leave at any time with the consent of the employer and return to work. An employee benefiting from parental leave retains all employee's rights beyond the right to remuneration, which is replaced with the relevant provision of social insurance (maternity allowance). The Employee under parental leave is also protected against employment termination.

The amendment to the Labor Code of 24 July 2015, has made significant changes, i.a. the eighth chapter of the Labor Law, including rights related to childbirth and upbringing. It entered into force on 2 January 2016 and includes all types of broadly defined parental leave: maternity leave, additional maternity leave, parental leave, paternity leave and child care leave. The amendment – in a different extent – has covered employees , those remaining in business relations, as well as those performing work on a different basis, covered with social insurance of sickness and maternity (sickness insurance). The Changes were and are the part of wider program of pro- family activities and anti-deteriorating demographic situation in Poland, regarding to the property protection and the economic freedom, enjoying by employers.

The parental rights of the closest family member of the employee

This study concerns the problem of the term of the closest family member of the employee in Polish Labour Code. The definition of the closest family member of the employee exists from the Janunuary’s recent amendment to the Labour Code. It causes a lot of practical problems because the legislator probably made a mistake with the definition of these group of the entitled employees. The Author analizes the scope of the problematic definition, the rights of the employees-family member and the rights and obligations of the employer during the examination of the leave motions for leave of such employees.

Increasing the number of economically active people is one of the key instrument to deal with an aging society, that Europe is facing at present. This applies in particular to women, which participation rate in the labour market is lower than that of men. One reason for women's lower professional activity is the difficulties in combining work with family responsibilities. Labour law and especially issues such as organisation of working time and child-care leaves, reamain one of the key areas in the actions for implementing the work-life balance strategy – to achieve the better balance between professional and private life of an employee. On 2 January 2016 the amendement to the Labour Code entered into force, which has been designed to constitute a further step towards the creation of consistent and coherent pro-famility policy, that allow economically active people for fulfilment of their parental aspirations. In this regard, this article is aimed at evaluation of the legal regulation concerning parental rights of employess as regards child-care leaves and organisation of working time, with a special focus on indicated legislative amendement, in terms of achieving the assumptions underlying the work-life balance strategy.

The paper describes social rights regulated by French constitutional provisions such as right to health, right to social assistance and right to housing

The constitutional social security rights in Latvia

The Constitution of the Republic of Latvia contains two articles explicitly providing social security rights. Article 109 provides: ‘Everyone has the right to social security in old age, for work disability, for unemployment and in other cases as provided by law.’ Article 111 stipulates: ‘The State shall protect human health and guarantee a basic level of medical assistance for everyone.’ However there are few more norms which are connected with the social security rights. Those are - Article 110 providing for the obligation of the state to protect marriage, family, rights of the parents and children, Article 105 providing the right to property and Article 91 providing the principle of equality. The paper describes material and personal scope of these provisions

In the Basic Law (“Grundgesetz”) – the German Constitution – a special and coherent catalogue of social human rights is not foreseen. Only a few social rights’ guarantees primarily as to women, mothers, children and handicapped persons are explicitly stipulated. Therefore, in the current German legal thought social human rights are regarded as neither fundamental, nor integral parts of human rights. As the full spectrum of human rights acknowledged in international law, among them above all the basic social human rights to work, education, health, accommodation, social security or social assistance (Articles 22-26 UDHR), does not correspond to the far more restricted catalogue of human rights explicitly figured out in the Basic Law as fundamental rights (“Grundrechte”), the doctrine argues even more that due to their very legal nature social human rights could not and never exist.

The new Hungarian Fundamental Law, in keeping with the spirit of the Constitutional Court decisions, treats social security not as a right, but as a state goal. Another change is reflected in the fact that the assistance to be provided is no longer of the extent “necessary for subsistence”, but just the extent “determined by law”.Furthermore, the word of social insurance has been completely removed from among the means of social security, and only the system of social institutions and measures remained in the text. The Fundamental Law contains regulations which aim to restore balance by reducing social security, public welfare and public services. These provisions aim to ensure that there are no constitutional barriers to introduction measures to make benefits dependent on the performance of work or other activity regarded as socially beneficial, in keeping with the new social-policy approach.

The Dutch constitutional guarantees of social rights are very limited. It is only up to Parliament, and not to courts, to decide whether the guarantees of Article 20 have been infringed. These guarantees are very limited. They require ensuring a subsistence income, but this does not prevent the legislature from imposing conditions on claimants to undertake steps to provide for a living themselves. Such conditions can seriously influence the legal character of benefits.

In Netherlands protection by international treaties can sometimes be invoke, provided that these rules are unconditional and clear enough. In practice this means that rules that are contrary to an equal treatment provision or prohibition of cost sharing are overruled.

In Czech Republic following rights are mentioned by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms: the right to acquire the means of ones livelihood by work, the right to adequate material security in old age, during periods of work incapacity, and in the case of the loss of their provider, the right to the protection of health and the right to free medical care and to medical aid on the basis of public insurance, Social protection of family, right of parents who are raising children to assistance from the state and right of women for special care during pregnancy.

The paper discusses the right to social security in the Belgian Constitution and its relation to the different social security reforms due to the recent economic crisis. The main research question is the following: “Can the right to social security in the Belgian Constitution be used as a real instrument to prevent social regress and as a stop for the roll-back of social expenses in times of crisis?”

In addition to the “Bismarckian” and “Beveridge” classifications of the Greek welfare system, it shared, at least until the eve of the crisis at the end of the 2000s, the characteristics of the welfare model developed in southern Europe, pairing serious gaps in the social security net and remarkably generous benefits reserved for a protected core of the labour market. The article describes in details constitutional grounds of Greek social security rights.

In Slovenia there are several constitutional provisions, which are rather important for shaping the social security system and limiting the legislator when he wishes to reduce the (personal and/or material) scope of social security rights. In Slovenia its meaning has been explained by the Slovenian Constitutional Court and legal theory, although, to far lesser extent than the principle of the state governed by the rule of law.

The evaluation of social rights through the prism of the Polish Constitution leads to moderately optimistic conclusions. There are basic rights within the social security rights in the Polish Constitution. The definite stand of the Constitutional Tribunal on the necessity of the Legislator’s maintenance of the minimum as guaranteed by the provisions of the basic law allows the assumption that social rights will constitute a permanent and vital element of the Polish legal system. It should be particularly noticed that many constitutional norms indicate the necessity to undertake positive action that should, in consequence, lead to the development of social rights.

The Charter of Fundamental Rights does not contain the exhaustive list of fundamental rights for the field of labour law. On contrary, the number of rights that are found in the Charter under Title ‘Solidarity’ is rather modest. Those rights quite fragmentally cover various aspects of employment with different degrees of precision and wide discretion for the Member States. As case-law of the CJEU confirms, the content of those rights will largely depend on the existing secondary legislation of the European Union. However, the multiple dimension of protection of human rights in Europe suggests that the labour standards elaborated in the legal frameworks of the European Convention of Human Rights, International Labour Organisation and European Social Charter may fill the content of the provisions of the Charter.

Many solutions for individual and collective labour law, which are currently in force in Poland, were established during the communist period and during the transition. As a result of the development of the legal system and socio-economic changes they do not meet the modern requirements of socio-economic development.

Noteworthy, in particular, is the personal scope of labour law. The authors point out that all work in accordance with Art. 24 of the Polish Constitution is under the protection of the law. Consequently, combining employment with the work of only those staff subordinated (art. 22 Polish Labour Code) seems too narrow. The problem of the personal scope of labour law is even more important when it is taken into consideration that in Poland more than 26% of the work is outside the employment relationship. Being covered by the provisions of the labour law is possible due to the established way of understanding the subordination of staff being abandoned, or removing subordination as a distinctive feature of worker status in favor of other criteria. These might include fixed performance of work for another person, the earning purpose of employment, and providing legal protection for persons who work under certain conditions. The authors consider methods of extending legal regulations applied to subordinate employees to date: through direct coverage of labour law to people providing jobs to those who are not subordinate, as well as those applied in references to labour law to the necessary extent, as is currently done in the case of, among others, contractors performing work in a cottage industry (Art. 304 (4) KP). The authors also evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the methods mentioned above.

An important issue for the future of labour law is also the legal position of trade unions. The authors analyze two models of the organizational position of trade unions. The first is the model according to which unions operate primarily in the workplace, and their main powers are carried out by enterprise trade unions (as it is now in Poland). Regarding the second model, the organizational structure of trade unions is outside the workplace. Another important question that requires an answer is: who are represented by unions, their members or all employees? This is equivalent to the dilemma of choosing between the corporate model and the model of representation, which, in principle, we have to do under Polish labour law. Obviously, the choice of one of these competing model solutions involves important consequences, including the scope of entities covered by collective bargaining, the legal conditions of the right to strike, the legal character of autonomous legal acts which establishing involves trade unions, as well as the role non-union employee's representations.

Characteristics of employee’s duty to protect personal data

Pursuant to Article 100 § 2 item 5 of the Labour Code dated 26 June 1974 an employee is required to observe confidentiality laid down under separate statutory provisions. This obligation covers a worker who, by virtue of the pursuit of a particular type of work or by virtue of the place where the work is exercised,  has access to information of the kind covered by the obligation of secrecy laid down in separate provisions. One of the cases of confidentiality protected by law under separate provisions is the confidentiality of personal data and the ways of their protection. The obligation of confidentiality by persons authorised to process personal data is based on Article 39(2) of the Data Protection Act of 29 August 1997. The employer, acting as the administrator of personal data, gives an individually appointed employee by name the authorisation to process personal data. In the authorisation the employer shall specify the following: 1/types of personal data to which a given employee shall have access, 2/ means of the processing of personal data to be fulfilled by a given employee. The employee authorised to process personal data shall be bound by the obligation to keep the data and the ways of their protection used by a given employer secret.

The employment of civil servants - current problems

The article has been submitted to the fundamental problems of civil service law and employment of officials. The concept of a civil service law occurs in the doctrine of employment law, rather than in the language of the law. The concept of civil service law relates to employment in the executive bodies and its primary category is the concept of an official. Civil service law regulates the status of the officials employed in government offices, non-governmental administrations, local government administration and with some additional reservations in the courts and the public prosecutor's office. Currently, it is considered that the civil service law is a part of the labour law, though genetically derived from public law. The most common basis for the employment of officials is a contract of employment.

Another basis of the employment relationship in administration is nomination, appointment and selection. The legal situation of officials has been discussed not only from the perspective of labour law but also in constitutional aspect. The article shows the importance of the principle of political neutrality of the civil servants for the constitutional idea of civil service.

The article presents also issues related to the recruitment process for a position in the public sector from the point of view of the principle of equal access to posts in the public sector. The higher positions in the civil service are of particular importance in the structures of the public administration, what concerns especially the position of the Director-General of the Office. Unfortunately, the legislature gave up an open and competitive recruitment for senior positions in the civil service

The article shows the impact of recent changes in the labour code and in the law on civil service on the legal position of public administration officials and process of creating professional and impartial civil service.

Analysis of regulations concernig severance payments in connection with the termination of employment  for reason not related to the individual employees and their conformity with the principles from management theory and law

The purpose of this paper  is to show, that severance payments  in conection with the termination of employment  for reason not related to the individual employees are an element of remuneration. This is why the principles governing remuneration have to be applied by employers and trade unions also to these payments. In author's opinion there is no problems in practical observance of principles: compulsority, privilege, cash payment, particularism. However, doubts appear for practice of application of principles of undiscrimination and decency, in the context of too high benefits which receive individual workers. As a metter of principles of modified equivalency, there is a problem with  calculation of the amount of severance payments based on total years of work. If we talk about principle of formalism the problem is precision of record concerning condition granting this payment.

Trade union membership as a ground of discrimination in employment

Trade union membership is not listed among the grounds of discrimination under the provisions of EU directives concerning equal treatment in employment. Such criterion of discrimination of employees is, however, recognized in certain national legal orders, including the Polish labour law. The Polish legislator decided upon specific, parallel protection and did not confine with the regulations contained in the act on trade unions but also formulated a ban on discrimination based on trade union membership on the grounds of the Labour Code.

Labour law – private law or public law. Deliberations on the nature of employment contract

Labour law is in fact a part of the public law. Although, genetically and to a certain extent normatively, it is related to private law it is heterogeneous in nature. Despite the fact that the essence of labour law is tantamount to free contractual relationships, it is becoming more and more public (statutory) law as the process of limiting the employment contract by the legislator is still increasing. The nature of labour law as the public one is confirmed by the contents of the employment contract which contains the features characteristic for an administrative contract. Moreover, a number of labour law institutions is characterised by orders and prohibitions aiming at enforcing specific employer’s behaviour. This is particularly apparent in the parenthood protection where more and more new obligations towards the employees are imposed on the employers which are completely inappropriate to the equivalence in terms of employment relationship. Thus, legal acts regarding labour law are in fact becoming rather more purely political acts or social policy ones than the exponents of the needs in the law-making process.

Trade union monopoly right to initiate and conduct a collective dispute  versus the constitutional right to collective bargaining

The problem of collective industrial disputes and, in particular the legal regulations in this respect, have always raised controversies in the literature that examines labour rights, mainly due to the seriousness of the issue. Among other things, the doubts are related to the legislator-guaranteed trade union monopoly power to initiate collective disputes as well as their right to sole representation of employees in a collective dispute. While emphasizing the necessity to allow for the essentially Polish reality of collective employment relations, the author attempts to answer the question whether these regulations are in correlation with the constitutional right to collective bargaining and to what extend they can be changed.

Statutory restrictions on the freedom to form and join trade unions and constitutional guarantees

This article concerns on personal scope of freedom of association, as a sense of workers right to organize due to polish law. In this publication it is shown that the personal scope of freedom of association which was indicated in polish trade union act wasn’t not only in accordance with the constitiution but also with the international law. The author concerns in this article on the most important matters which are association with the case of personal scope of freedom of association.

Right to fair trial is one of the basis of the Polish legal system. It also applies to labor disputes heard by labor courts. They settle not only disputes between parties to the employment  relationship but also other cases arise from industrial relations. Moreover, jurisdication of the labor court does not include resolution of collective labor disputes. These disputes are settled in a separate mediation or arbitration procedure.

The aim of this article is to analyze the impact of some of the major changes introduced to Code of Civil Procedure by the Act of September 10, 2015 amending some statutes in connection with the promotion of amicable dispute resolution methods on the labour-related proceedings, from the stand-point of the degree of harmonization of both regulations, in particular the assessment of the correctness of incorporating the new provisions in existing legal framework governing employment disputes. Discussed regulation is aimed at popularizing mediation and other methods of extra-judicial settlement of disputes in civil matters. It should be noted that the labour-related cases are assumed to have high potential for amicable resolution so one may also assume that the solutions introduced by the ADR promotion Act will have a strong bearing on the labour-related proceedings.

Social protection could refer to both social security and labour rights. From a Swedish perspective the notion social protection in the first instance refers to social security rights. The paper in the main deals with social security rights, but some words will also be said about labour rights.