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The President has signed an amendment to the Law on Restriction of Trade on Sundays and Holidays and Certain Other Days. According to the amendments, the Sunday falling on December 24th will be covered by the trade ban, and stores will be allowed to open on the two Sundays preceding it. This year, the trading Sundays before Christmas will therefore be December 10th and 17th 2023. Given the law’s effective date, employers have very little time to change their work schedules to provide employees with the breaks required by the law. For the same reason, the schedules will be communicated to employees on short notice, which may be met with their dissatisfaction. Entrepreneurs should also be mindful of the trade ban on Sunday, December 24th, unless they are operating businesses covered by exceptions to the law (e.g., liquid fuel stations, pharmacies, florists, etc.). Trading on days covered by the ban may be punishable by a fine of between PLN 1,000 and PLN 100,000.
As of 1st January 2024, the allowance for work in special conditions will be excluded from the amount of the minimum wage, which from next year will be PLN 4,242 gross, and then PLN 4300 gross (from July). The change means that it will not be taken into account when determining whether the remuneration an employee receives is at least equal to the minimum wage.
According to the amended regulations, an allowance for work in special conditions is a supplement to remuneration due to work in conditions that are particularly arduous or particularly harmful to health, work involving great physical or mental effort, work that is particularly dangerous. We would like to remind that the payment of such an allowance is not mandatory and results, for example, from the conclusion of collective agreements, and their amount is regulated by the provisions of internal acts operating in a particular workplace.
With the end of the epidemic state, from 1st July 2023, the 180-day deadline to perform medical examinations and health and safety training suspended during the pandemic period will run. Employers have until 28th December 2023 to complete these. Therefore, employers who have not yet fulfilled their obligation of outstanding examinations and training should fulfil it immediately. It is worth remembering that there may actually be less time to comply due to the upcoming Christmas.
Employers are obliged to provide free meals to employees working in particularly arduous conditions, when it is necessary to replenish energy reserves. According to OHS regulations, the winter period is from 1st November to 31st March, and during this time, employees working outdoors are entitled to preventive meals, as long as their work generates an energy expenditure of more than 1,500 kcal for men and 1,000 kcal for women. The regulations indicate that the employer should issue a preventive meal in the form of one hot dish of about 1,000 kcal. Importantly, it is not possible to pay an employee an allowance instead of issuing a meal.
Regardless of the season, employers are obliged to provide preventive drinks, with energy expenditure exceeding 1,500 kcal for men and 1,000 kcal for women. In the case of employees working outdoors on days when the temperature drops below 10°C, hot drinks are provided to them throughout the shift in quantities that meet their needs.
The labour market in 2023 was a very intense year for employers – two major amendments to the Labour Code were behind us. We finally saw the regulation of remote work and sobriety control, and then employers had to find their way through new regulations introducing new rights for employees (the so-called work-life balance amendment). An important change is also the exemption of employees from court fees on lawsuits, even when the value of their claims exceeds PLN 50,000.
The year 2024 is shaping up to be equally intense. We enter January with a record minimum wage rate, which will increase again starting July 1st 2024. Poland must implement the EU directive on women on boards by December 28th 2024. Perhaps it is in 2024 that we will finally see the implementation of the so-called whistleblower directive. It is difficult to say whether the parliament will also deal with the implementation provisions of the pay transparency directive next year, but given the scale of the changes it introduces, employers should already be thinking about introducing appropriate solutions.
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