Labour and Social Security Journal 12/2022

Production offshoring is a popular business strategy which enables the companies to acquire competitive advantages, in particular by reducing operating costs, especially labour costs. Application thereof entails the risk that, in pursuit of economic goals, the companies would take one step too far and tacitly accept violations of the fundamental rights of those employed by their subcontractors, especially in developing countries, where the level of legal protection is still relatively low. One of the most important challenges of the modern world is to ensure decent work for these people. The question posed in this article is how to achieve it and whether the International Labour Organisation — created to promote fundamental human rights and improve working and living conditions — will play the key role in this process.

European civil procedural law excludes social security from its scope without defining the matter. The concept is subject to an autonomous interpretation aimed at ensuring the effectiveness of Union law in the field of coordination of social security systems. It is accepted in the case law of the CJEU that the substantive content of the concept of social security is determined by the material scope of application of Regulation (EU) No 883/2004. Matters that are not covered by the coordination of social security systems remain outside the scope of this exclusion. With regard to them, assessment of the application of the norms of European civil procedural law requires consideration of the concept of civil and commercial cases. Only by considering both concepts of "civil and commercial cases" and of "social security" — it is possible to determine the scope of the social security exclusion in European civil procedural law.

The Act of 19 July 2019 on ensuring accessibility to persons with specific needs (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1062) is a special act for a number of reasons. It has a horizontal and relatively comprehensive scope. It covers various areas of social life previously regulated by separate legal acts. Implementing the principle of accessibility from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it predates EU law in this regard. It treats the issue of disability in a mainstream manner/way. In the sense that it addresses different groups of people with even temporary difficulties related to the barriers they face. This does not mean that the solutions adopted are free of defects. Many of them are pointed out in detail in the commentary to the Act (Roszewska, (ed.), 2021). Regardless of the substantive assessment of the act itself, it certainly deserves a look at the grounds for its introduction. The aforementioned UN Convention has also been adopted by the EU. However, the interaction between human rights conventions and EU law is complex. The social background of the law's adoption/of the enactment of the act was also unique. It was preceded by an intensive social campaign of the community of persons with disabilities for accessibility, which culminated in the adoption of the Accessibility Plus Program. One of its results is precisely the act on ensuring accessibility to persons with specific needs. Part one is devoted to these issues. In part two, the scope of the act will be indicated.

Under current regulations, the period of the four-year assessorship cannot be extended or suspended. The assessor during this period should remain in full health, in constant working capacity and has no space to fulfill parental duties. If, in fact, longer periods of excused absence from work happened during the assessorship, then, of course, from the perspective of labor law, the assessor remains protected, but his work is still subjected to the process of appropriate evaluation, which directly translates into professional promotion. Then this shorter (due to, for example, parental leave) time to fulfill the duties of a judge may prove insufficient to make an objective assessment of the candidate's qualifications, as well as insufficient to gain adequate professional practice. This, in turn, can lead to very conscious decisions by the assessor (especially made by women) not to start a family during the assessorship and to postpone these plans. It seems that a correct pro-family policy of the state should adopt such legislative solutions that will encourage citizens to start a family and have children at the age that, for biological reasons, is most suitable for this. De lege lata, the existing legal loophole leads to a situation in which, with respect to assessors of parents, the constitutional principle of equal access to positions in the public service and the principle of equal treatment and non-discrimination is violated. In our legal order, there are already such solutions that make it possible to combine professional (university teachers) or training (doctoral students) duties with the role of a parent without harming either role. The legislator should also apply these solutions to court assessors, who belong to a young professional group of employees subject to both the training process and the evaluation system. De lege ferenda, the introduction into the Polish legal order of regulations that will allow an assessor to apply for an extension of the duration of the assessorship and its temporary suspension proportionally by the time of fulfilling parental duties, or by the time of other excused absence, remains necessary and fully justified.

Author in the following article presents the problems of processing personal data relating to qualifications of persons applying for employment. The analysis is conducted from the perspective of protecting the public and social interest, as well as the interests of employers-entrepreneurs. She draws attention to the need to distinguish between employee qualifications (competences) and a narrower concept of professional qualifications.

The paper discusses the institution of voluntary resignations as a tool gaining increasingly greater importance in staff reductions nowadays. It is an effort to provide the instrument's definition and present its legal nature with a particular emphasis put on legal ramifications stemming from inclusion or omission of the social component of trade unions into the process of preparation and implementation of Voluntary Resignations Plan (the 'PDO', abbrievated from Polish)  as an alternative solution to lay-offs. The article is grounded in the verdicts from the Supreme Court referring to the complexity of voluntary resignations as well as provides an insight into a range of publications specific to the problem discussed herein.

The author refers to the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court focused on the issue of infringement of the employee's personal rights as part of the periodic assessment carried out by the employer. She discusses the latest judicate in this field regarding the periodic assessment of academic teacher in more detail.