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On March 9, 2023 Sejm passed another amendment to the Labour Code implementing two EU directives: work-life balance and on transparent and predictable working conditions. The act is currently awaiting the President’s signature.
The amendments include:
The new regulations will take effect 21 days after the law is published, which means that HR departments have little time to prepare for the upcoming changes
On February 16th, a new draft of the Law on Collective Disputes appeared. The proposed changes can be considered revolutionary relative to the current legislation.
One of the proposed changes relates to the scope of the subject matter of a collective dispute, which, after the amendment, will be able to concern collective trade union rights or freedoms, as well as professional, economic or social collective interests or rights, related to the performance of work. The draft also includes a provision to limit the duration of a collective dispute. The draft presented calls for “closing” the dispute within 9 months, with the possibility of extending this period by the joint will of the parties for a period of no more than another 3 months.
On February 21st, regulations on sobriety checks came into force. Employers must remember to stipulate in a collective bargaining agreement, work regulations, or an announcement the group or groups of employees covered by the check and the manner in which it is to be carried out, including the type of device used for the check, the time and frequency of the check.
In addition to sobriety checks, the employer may introduce a check of employees for the presence of alcohol-like substances in their bodies. What are these means? According to the published regulation of the Ministry of Health, drugs acting similarly to alcohol are opioids, amphetamine and its analogs, cocaine, cannabinoids and benzodiazepines.
The new regulations on sobriety control apply accordingly to employers arranging work performed by cooperators under civil law contracts, as well as B2B contracts.
Amendments to the Labour Code regarding the introduction of remote work and sobriety checks will also affect other obligations of employers, including keeping employee records. The draft regulation provides for changes in Part B of an employee’s personal file (including keeping documents on the performance of remote work or confirmation of informing the employee about the introduction of sobriety checks) and the addition of a new part to the personal file, i.e. Part E, where documents related to an employee’s sobriety check or a check for the presence in his body of agents acting similarly to alcohol are to be kept.
Importantly, the employer will have to record in the file only the result indicating a state of intoxication or the presence of substances acting similarly to alcohol. According to the text of the act, the regulation is expected to come into force 7 days after the date of publication, and the part on remote work on April 7th, 2023.
As of March 1st, 2023, all previous ECP (in Polish: PPK, pracownicze plany kapitałowe) opt-out declarations expired, as the so-called auto-enrollment in ECP took place (it takes place every
4 years). The employer automatically enrolls all its employees who are 18 and under 55 in the ECP. Those aged 55-70 should submit a corresponding application to their employer in order to participate in the program.
This means that, as of April 1st, employers will make payments for ECP participants, excluding those who resign to make contributions. As a reminder, participation in ECP is voluntary, which means that employees can opt out at any time.
The Ministry of Finance has decided that this year the popular PIT-37 and PIT-38 tax returns will only be available through the “Twój e-PIT” service, rather than through the convenient and popular “e-Deklaracje” system used in previous years. That system made it easy to prepare the returns as PDF files and then submit them electronically using the appropriate plug-in for a popular application that reads files in this format.
Surprisingly, people filing other tax forms, such as PIT-28, PIT-36 and PIT-36L, will still be able to submit their returns via e-Deklaracje at podatki.gov.pl. According to the Ministry of Finance, Twój e-PIT is sufficient because it offers a simple, fast and convenient electronic tax filing, which the Ministry of Finance strongly encourages – as it reduces the need for officials to process paper forms. However, the Ministry seems to have failed to foresee that it is making it more difficult for taxpayers to get help in preparing their returns – it is not possible to upload a draft return previously prepared by someone else to Twój e-PIT, whereas with e-Deklaracje it was easy to submit such a return.
Nowadays, taxpayers who want to get help from others can only use commercial programmes that offer the facilities previously available in e-Deklaracje or file their returns on paper. So, it may turn out that by promoting Twój e-PIT at the expense of e-Deklaracje, the authorities are throwing the baby out with the bathwater and the number of paper returns will turn out to be higher than expected.
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