Consequences of counting periods of professional activity towards length of service under Article 302¹ of the Labour Code – a polemic against the thesis of retroactive and one-time acquisition of the right to employee benefits in the public sector as of 1

The article examines the implications of counting periods of professional activity towards an employee’s length of ser­vice under Article 3021 of the Labour Code, introduced by the Act of 26 September 2025, where the new rules would mean that the required length of service had already been completed before the Act entered into force. It considers whether periods of self-employment, work under civil-law contracts, or other qualifying forms of professional activity may give rise to the retroactive acquisition of service-re­lated benefits, or to their one-off acquisition on 1 January 2026. The author rejects both interpretations, arguing that Article 6 of the amending Act provides no basis either for the retroactive acquisition of an entitlement or for its au­tomatic acquisition upon the Act’s entry into force. Enti­tlement to a benefit requires both a rule linking a specified length of service to that benefit and a rule requiring the relevant period to be counted towards that length of ser­vice. Accordingly, the subsequent recognition of a period of professional activity for legal purposes does not, per se, give rise to claims relating to the period before the new provi­sions came into force.

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