Labour and Social Security Journal 01/2024

When regulating remote work, the legislator assumed that the system of sanctions previously established in the labour law, and in particular in the Labour Code, is sufficient to ensure compliance with the provisions concerning this work. These are sanctions of invalidity, fines applied to the employee, property sanctions (private law) and penalties for misdemeanours and crimes against the employee<sup>`</sup>s rights (public law). A separate sanction is sanction of the lack of binding force of normative acts of autonomous labour law (collective agreements, company regulations). Such sanction may be imposed on collective agreements and company remote work regulation. On the other hand, the sanction of invalidity applies to individual employment contracts and individual agreements amending the previsions of previously concluded employment contracts. The consequence of violation of the provisions on remote work may therefore be the lack of binding force of collective agreements and regulations for remote work and the invalidity of contractual provisions regarding this work. In certain cases, the employer is obliged to accept the employee`s request to work remotely. Failure to comply with this obligation may be classified as a serious breach of basic obligations towards the employee and become basic for termination of the employment contract without notice due to the fault of employer. The Labour Code also provides that under certain circumstances an employee may be ordered to work remotely. This instruction has a special legal character and therefore, in the event on its non-compliance, the employer may not impose a penalty (admonition or reprimand) against the employee.

The contribution pertains to the amendments to the Labour Code concerning employment contract for a probationary period that were enacted in 2023 in the course of transposition of the Directive 2019/1152 on transparent and predictable working conditions. Author introduces characteristic features of employment contract for probationary period, provisions of the Directive 2019/1152 relating to probationary period, new Labour Code regulations on the length of probationary period, admissibility of a renewal of a contract for probationary period, as well as the prohibition of terminating an employment contract with notice or applying a measure having the outcome equivalent to termination of an employment contract. Author pays attention to practical problems of applying new provisions, and he emphasizes incoherencies that were created in the process of implementing the Directive 2019/1152. In author's opinion, de lege ferenda it would be appropriate to abolish the separated contract of employment for probationary period, and to give the parties the option to agree on a probationary period as a component of a fixed-term contract or an open-ended contract.

The question of the essence of technology posed in the article is aimed at bringing out what constitutes the being of the employer's management. The question about the technological determinants of the employer's management is thus a question about here is how technology relates to the employee. At the same time, this question sends us towards what is essential, we draw closer around what is most problematic, around the foundation of human protection – the principle of inviolability of human dignity. Only in the proximity of the algorithm are we able to experience what is inviolable, inalienable, indivisible, permanent and unalienable in human being. In its proximity is revealed at the same time the danger that technology hides in itself. This article attempts to capture this danger.

The directive on adequate minimum wages in the European Union provides for the obligation to promote collective bargaining and requires Members States to adopt measures to increase its coverage to 80%. Poland is one of the countries with the lowest level of collective bargaining throughout the European Union. The article discusses the reasons of the crisis as well as analyzes legal solutions, the introduction of which could contribute to the revival of social dialogue in conditions of low union density and low activity of social partners.

This paper is an analysis of the consequences of augmentation of the claim of employee for reinstatement to work due to the amendment of Labour Code, that came into effect on April 26th 2023. Every employee employed on a contract of employment on specified time may now claim for reinstatement. Because of many negative premises of the claim for reinstatement the parties to the lawsuit have more uncertainty of the court's sentence. The claim for reinstatement is inadequate to a contract of employment on specified time, because even if a worker is reinstated to work, the employer may not be forced to conclude the contract of employment, when the period of the contract expires. So even if an employee is reinstated to work, in principle, the employer has the right no to extend the contract of employment, which is contrary to one of the rules of labour law – the protection of security of an employment contract – and to the essence of the claim for reinstatement to work. Furthermore, this claim is a strong interference into the employer's human resources policy. There are legal systems among European Union's member states that do not even include the claim for reinstatement to work. Problems connected to this claim were also observed by the Codification Commission, that produced a project of the Labour Code that implemented a right for employers to redeem themselves from the reinstatement of an employer by paying a fixed amount.

The main purpose of this article is to answer the question of whether the suspension of economic activity can be considered a resignation from employment or other gainful work within the meaning of Article 17 Section 1 of the Family Benefits Act, and hence a premise for granting a carer benefit. Furthermore, the article also presents the interpretation of regulations in this regard presented by administrative courts. The fundamental thesis of this paper states that the interpretation of the term "resignation from employment or other gainful work" should be made on the basis of the provisions on the suspension of economic activity contained in the Act of 6 March 2018 - Entrepreneurs' Law. Welfare authorities wrongly interpret the above provisions in a strict manner, assuming that in the case of conducting non-agricultural economic activity, "resignation" is understood precisely as the deletion of the economic activity from the relevant register. It should be concluded that the suspension of economic activity is in fact a temporary resignation from conducting economic activity, and therefore it is tantamount to resignation from other gainful work, as provided for in Article 17 Section 1 of the Act on Family Benefits.

The author presents the latest judgment of the Supreme Court, determining the incompatibility of Art. 183(2) Polish Labour Code with EU law, to the extent that this provision provided for the possibility to admit an employee returning from leave related to parenting to work not only to the previous or equivalent work position, but also to the position only corresponding to his or her professional qualifications. This provision was repealed on April 26, 2023, but the effects of non compliance of Art. 183(2) Polish Labour Code with EU law open up a number of claims that can also be pursued under the current legal status. These include, among others, a claim for compensation for discrimination.