Amendments to the Labour Code – child care leave
New rules concerning the use of the child care leave (as amended in the Labour Code) have been in force since 1 October 2013. Child care leave is, as previously, 36 months long. If, however, two parents or custodians of a child are entitled to child care leave, one of them can take no more than 35 months. This is due to the fact that each parent or custodian of a child has an exclusive and nontransferable right to 1-month's leave out of the total child care leave of 36 months. Moreover, the employee may divide the child care leave into a maximum 5 terms (previously 4), and the period in which both parents or custodians may stay on leave at the same time has been extended from 3 to 4 months. An employee, who in a given calendar year, acquires the right to a vacation leave, and then he or she spends part of that calendar year on a child care leave and returns to work from it still in the same year, he/she will be entitled to full vacation leave (for the entire year) and not, as previously, to the proportionally reduced amount of the vacation leave for that given year.
Supreme Court judgment – assessment of the competitive activity of the employee
In a judgment of 8 March 2013 (II PK 194/12), the Supreme Court
replied to a question whether an employee's involvement in
competitive activities may be deemed a gross breach of the
employee's basic duty to take care of the interest of an
employer, and as a consequence, whether such breach may be a reason
for their disciplinary dismissal. The Supreme Court held that such
involvement on the part of the employee does not automatically mean
there has been a gross breach of their obligation to take care of
the interest of the employer. The obligation in question should be
understood as the obligation not to act to the detriment of the
employer and therefore, one should examine if and to what extent
the competitive activities taken by the employee are detrimental to
the proprietary and non-proprietary interests of the employer on a
case-by-case basis.
In the judgment mentioned above, the Supreme Court referred to a
situation where the employer and the employee did not enter into a
non-competition agreement for the duration of the employment
relationship. One should, however, take into account that in the
future, the foregoing restriction in terminating an employment
agreement without notice due to the employee's fault may be
taken into consideration by the courts regardless of the fact
whether or not any such agreement was concluded with the
employee.
Projected amendments to the Labour Code – a ban on demanding collateral security from employees
The first reading of the Members' of Parliament draft
amendments to the Labour Code has taken place. The draft provides
for the sanction of invalidity of the issuance of a promissory
note, an employee's statement on the submission to enforcement,
and also debt acknowledgment, with a view to securing the future
employment relation-based claims of an employer. Pursuant to the
proposed changes, the demand or acceptance of a promissory note or
any of the aforementioned collateral security instruments from an
employee would constitute a misdemeanor.
The admissibility to apply promissory notes in order to secure the
employer's receivables has not so far been treated by the
courts or academics unambiguously. The purpose of the authors of
the amendment was to definitely exclude the possibility for
employers to secure their claims with promissory notes and the
other instruments referred to in the draft. It seems, however, that
the proposed changes are not going to help to reach the intended
goal, and moreover, some new doubts seem likely to occur. The draft
amendment has been criticized by the Supreme Court. Trade unions
have also voiced their criticisms of the draft.
Minimum salary in 2014
The minimum salary for work in 2014 will rise to PLN 1,680 gross (as compared to PLN 1,600 in 2013).
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