Social policy and the labor market 4.0 and the future of labor law – the axiological and pragmatic dimension of challenges in the work on a new labor code

The need to codify labor law has long been invoked and emphasized by employers and employees. From the beginning of transformation, Poland has made changes towards compliance with EU law. However, no changes in collective labor law have been initiated. The changes that the world of work of the era of Fordism undergo, which together with the new technology and progressive globalization, have profound changes in the work and the labor market itself. Employment in traditional branches of industry decreased, the concentration of employees decreased, while the number of employees in the sector of small and medium enterprises increased. Parallel to these processes, labor markets are characterized by high imbalances and, apart from unemployment, the phenomenon of segmentation on the labor market appears. The last significant initiative was the creation in 2016 of the Labor Law Codification Commission, whose aim was to develop individual and collective labor law in 18 months. It does not need to be argued that the 18-month period of work on two major projects, individual and collective labor law, is too short a time to come to a thoughtful project that would provide a complex view of labor law.