Labour and Social Security Journal 11/2021

The author discusses the provisions of the issue of disclosure of remuneration for work through the prism of the draft directive of the European Parliament and of the Council [(European Commission Brussels, 4.3.2021 COM (2021) 93 final 2021/0050 (COD)] on strengthening the application of the principle of equal pay for men and women for equal work or work of equal value through pay transparency mechanisms and enforcement mechanisms, which introduces new EUwide principles of pay transparency. The draft requires the Member States, inter alia the obligation to develop and adopt unified regulations on the rights of employees to ask the employer for information on the individual level of remuneration and the average level of remuneration, broken down by gender, in relations to the categories of employees performing the same work or work of the same value. The obligation to publish the salary offered as early as the job advertisement stage can improve wage transparency. Providing salary spreads in job offers should be a statutory obligation and favor transparency and transparency, as well as enforce equal pay regardless of gender and other discrimination criteria. Polish labour law is not adjusted to the standards contained in the draft directive. De lege lata, it is difficult to talk about openness, transparency and transparency of remuneration in national regulations. National implementation of the new directive will have a positive impact on the introduction of new standards in the field of wage policy, in particular in the field of counteracting wage discrimination and the functioning of fair wages in national law.

This article present status of a temporary agency employee in Polish law in relation to maternity. Temporary agency work is classified as one of the atypical forms of employment which are characterized by a lower standard of employee protection. In principle, a temporary agency worker is subject to the same protective standards as those applicable to employees employed on the basis of a fixed-term contract without the participation of an employment agency. However, some differences can be found in the scope of extending the fixed-term contract of employment until the day of childbirth (Article 177 para. 3 of the Labour Code). This rule applies to female employees who were employed on the basis of a fixedterm contract of employment, which would be terminated after the third month of pregnancy. In Poland, however, this rule did not apply to temporary agency workers until 1 June 2017, when the legislaturę also protected temporary agency workers who have a total of at least 2 months of assignment to perform temporary agency work by a given temporary employment agency on the basis of an employment contract. The Polish legislator decided to introduce protection for pregnant temporary agency workers, as the previous solutions were contradictory to the EU directive on temporary agency work. The current solution is criticized because, as it is pointed out, it is in conflict with the purpose of temporary agency work, which is assumed to be flexible and short-term employment.

Przedmiotem artykułu jest status pracownicy tymczasowej w związku z macierzyństwem. Praca tymczasowa jest zaliczana do nietypowych form zatrudnienia, które charakteryzuje niższy standard ochrony pracownika. W zasadzie pracownica tymczasowa podlega tym samym normom ochronnym, które obowiązują w przypadku pracowników zatrudnianych bez udziału agencji zatrudnienia na podstawie umów terminowych. Chodzi głównie o zakaz wypowiedzenia umowy o pracę w czasie ciąży i macierzyństwa, a także prawo do urlopu macierzyńskiego. Warto jednak zwrócić uwagę, że praca tymczasowa nie gwarantuje w pełni ochrony macierzyństwa. Pewne odrębności można odnaleźć w zakresie przedłużenia terminowej umowy o pracę do dnia porodu (art. 177 § 3 k.p.). Ta zasada obejmuje pracownice, które zostały zatrudnione na podstawie terminowych umów o pracę, które to umowy uległyby rozwiązaniu po upływie trzeciego miesiąca ciąży. W Polsce zasada ta nie miała jednak zastosowania do pracownic tymczasowych do 1 czerwca 2017 r., kiedy to ustawodawca również objął ochroną pracownice tymczasowe, które mają łączny co najmniej 2-miesięczny okres skierowania do wykonywania pracy tymczasowej przez daną agencję pracy tymczasowej na podstawie umowy o pracę. Ustawodawca polski postanowił wprowadzić ochronę pracownicy tymczasowej w ciąży, ponieważ dotychczasowe rozwiązania były sprzeczne z uregulowaniem unijnej dyrektywy w zakresie pracy tymczasowej. Obecne rozwiązanie jest jednak krytykowane, ponieważ — jak się wskazuje — jest sprzeczne z celem pracy tymczasowej, która z założenia ma być zatrudnieniem elastycznym i krótkotrwałym.

While illness and work-inability random events, independent from the human will, the sickness absence it a result of conscious decisions. Employees vary in its use. The subject of interest in the article is sickness absenteeism, so the phenomenon of the overuse of sickness leaves, that is medically unjustified. Basing on the literature and results of previous research the essence of this problem have been presented, as well as its types and determinants. Sickness absence, like any other social privilege, is a field of potential abuse. Excessive use of sick leaves may take two forms: moral hazard or welfare fraud. Intensity of these problems depends on the number of factors within individual characteristics of worker, features of working environment, and a broad social and institutional context. We investigated those factors and identified dozen of them.

The subject of the considerations presented in this article will be the so far formulated proposals for seniority pensions, which will be assessed in terms of consistency with the reformed pension system and the values upon which it was founded. Using dogmatic and economic methods, the analysis will cover individual proposals from submitted draft bills as well as alternative solutions. The first of two articles describes the issues involved in obtaining a new entitlement. The most appropriate construction of the seniority pension was identified, and as demonstrated, creating the seniority condition based on the existing catalogues of contributory and non-contributory periods will be extremely difficult. The second section will focus on the economic and legal aspects of seniority pensions, including the calculation formula, as well as an alternative to the seniority pension structure. This study is the first to provide a broad overview of the legal issues of early retirement in the context of the Polish defined contribution system. The presented reasoning aims to verify and organise the arguments concerning seniority pensions, with the author's intention of contributing to the improvement of public discourse on this subject as well as the betterment of future draft bills.

The study deals with the issue of penal reaction to violation of prohibition on entrusting an employed person with performing work in trade on Sundays and/or public holidays or performing activities related to trade in breach of that prohibition. Apart from the analysis of the statutory features of the criminal provisions in force in this respect, reference was made to the latest case law of the Supreme Court. The author shares and develops the opinion that the predominant activity, referred to in Article 6 sec. 1 point 6 of the Act on restriction of trade on Sundays and public holidays, constitutes an activity that covers the assortment indicated in this provision. The Author also supports the opinion that is the formal nature of the entry in the relevant register which designates such activities.

The author discusses the method of calculating the equivalent for unused holiday leave for temporary employees (in selected aspects), in particular in a situation where the termination of the employment relationship was preceded by a long period of nonperformance of work due to incapacity to work caused by illness, and then maternity leave, pointing to the existing legal gap. The author indicates possible ways of calculating the equivalent for unused holiday leave in such a situation and makes de lege ferenda remarks.

Migration phenomena are currently one of the greatest socio-political challenges. They affect a number of interconnected spheres of individual functioning in specific legal realities. The aim of the article is to discuss the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union issued on 15 July 2021 in case C-709/20, which concerns the possibility of differentiating entitlements to social assistance on the basis of the status legalizing the stay of an entity. This judgment significantly alters the Court's line of jurisprudence to date in relation to the normative bases constituting the social protection of a migrant Union citizen.

The author presents the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court regarding the interpretation of Article 8(2a) of the Act of 13 October 1998 on the social insurance system to the extent that this provision applies to insured persons who, under a civil law contract, perform work for an employer with whom they have an employment relationship. It also points to the latest judicature of the Supreme Court, which upheld the position on the need for an extensive interpretation of the phrase "work for the benefit of the employer".