Labour and Social Security Journal 03/2022

On 24 February 2022, the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine. As a result of the war, the citizens of Ukraine, mainly women with children, the elderly, and people with disabilities, were forced to flee their homes and leave the country, seeking shelter. Most of them entered directly the territory of the Republic of Poland, which has taken appropriate measures to admit Ukrainian citizens. The unprecedented mass influx of displaced persons into Poland made it necessary to prepare legal solutions addressed to Ukrainian citizens directly crossing Polish border, in addition to the already existing legal acts in the area of migration and asylum. The article discusses the Act on the aid to Ukrainian citizens in connection with an armed conflict in the territory of that country. The act was adopted on 12 March 2022 in order to quickly legalise the stay of Ukrainian citizens on the territory of the Republic of Poland and ensure smooth implementation of the aid.

By granting the employer's consent in situations specified in the law, the employee authorizes him to take specific action, e.g. a pregnant employee authorizes the employer to delegate her outside her permanent place of work (Article 178 of the Labour Code). Although a number of provisions in the Labour Code and in other acts use this term, the concept of consent has not been defined by the Polish legislator. The provisions of EU law regulating the granting of consent indicate the necessary features of this activity (behavior). They are: voluntary, specific, conscious and unambiguous demonstration of will, which the person confirms in the form of a declaration or a clear action. Thus, only the consent given by the employee under the above conditions can be considered as an expression of his will. The empirical research described in the paper shows that employees, contrary to their belief, do not have knowledge about labour law, in particular as to the legal circumstances related to granting consent to specific actions of the employer. In our opinion, knowledge on this subject is necessary for the informed consent of the employee. Necessary information should therefore be provided to the employee by the employer. In most cases, the law does not directly require the employer to inform the employee about the circumstances related to granting consent, but such an obligation should be derived from the obligation to cooperate in the performance of the commitment. Taking into account the fact that employees do not have a decidedly negative opinion about the observance of labour law by employers, there is a chance that the performance of such duties by employers will positively affect building relationships based on trust between the parties to the employment relationship, which brings significant benefits to both sides.

The basic thesis of the article is the statement that as a result of changes made to the Labour Code, in scientific discussion the boundaries between the concept of an employer and the concept of its body are blurred. The above results in the fact that the language of science becomes imprecise, and the lack of precision limits the development of science.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased interest in remote working. In Poland, the legislative body chose to legally standardize remote working, placing it among the tools used to counteract the pandemic and its effects. For some time now, there have been works on including remote work in the Polish Labour Code on a permanent basis. However, owing to the specific way of organizing work accompanying the remote form of its performance, in the course of creating a new legal framework for this institution, the social dimension of its functioning in practice should also be taken into account. To this end, the article analyzes remote working from the perspective of the employee and the employer, based on research conducted in this area both in Poland and in other countries.

The article is devoted to a critical analysis of the concept created in the jurisprudence of considering a partner of a two-person limited liability company as an "illusory partner" and, as a consequence, attributing to the second partner the status of an "almost sole" partner for social insurance purposes. Such a qualification means that the "almost sole" partner cannot be employed in that company on the basis of an employment contract, and therefore such a person is not subject to social insurance on that account, but should be insured as a partner of a one-person company (i.e. a person running a non-agricultural activity). The authors present doubts concerning this concept both on the basis of national legislation and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Over the last year the Senate of the Republic of Poland prepared two proposals of amendments to the Act of 6th March 2018 Entrepreneur Law (Senate forms 200 and 200s) which propose the introduction of so-called holiday relief due to the exercise of the right to rest by the so-called self-employed persons. The aim of the paper is to present the proposed legal regulations and to attempt to assess them from the point of view of making it possible to exercise the aforementioned entitlement in practice for the indicated group of persons. The legislative process on the Act has not been completed yet, which is not only influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic situation, but also by the numerous doubts around the proposed legal solutions, which resulted in significant alterations to the originally adopted amendment proposal before its draft was submitted to the Sejm of the Republic of Poland. Regardless of the further legislative future of the proposals it is worth considering whether the legal solutions in the scope of the entitlement follow the right direction and whether, as a consequence, they can be used in the construction of the model of legal protection of self-employed persons. Special attention is given in the discussion to self-employed persons performing work under conditions of strong economic dependence on one or a small number of contractors.

The author presents the latest cese-law of the Supreme Court regarding the suspension and termination of a collective bargaining agreement. She indicates the rules on which these events affect the situation of people who are not employees, but were covered by the provisions of the agreement (e.g. retirees and pensioners).