Labour Law – what awaits us in 2025?

by Agnieszka Szczodra-Hajduk, Paulina Przewoźnik-Lewiński, Aleksandra Fiuk

24 February 2025

A new year means new regulations! In 2025, major changes in Polish labour law await. They will not only affect employees but also entail new obligations and financial burden on employers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Christmas Eve is a day off
Collective Labour Agreements and collective agreements
Revision of OHS regulations
New definition of workplace bullying
Wage transparency
Additional parental leave for parents of premature babies

Christmas Eve is a day off

On 1 February 2025 the list of public holidays laid down in the Polish Holidays Act was extended to include 24 December. In addition, following the amendment of the Act on Restricted Trading on Sundays, Public Holidays and Certain Other Days, the ban on trade does not apply on three consecutive Sundays before Christmas Eve.

Collective Labour Agreements and collective agreements

The Act on Collective Labour Agreements and Collective Agreements was supposed to come into force on 1 January 2025. However, the legislative work on the draft has not been completed yet and, currently, continues in the EU Affairs Committee.

The draft act simplifies the procedure for concluding and registering collective labour agreements. In practice, the new regulations aim to improve the efficiency of the negotiation process between employers and trade unions. According to the explanatory notes to the bill, the new act will completely replace the previous provisions of Chapter XI of the Labour Code on collective labour agreements, and the objectives are as follows:

create an open catalogue of matters which fall under the collective labour agreement,
simplify the registration of company collective labour agreements and multi-employer collective labour agreements,
enable the help of a mediator during negotiations over collective labour agreements,
fix the duration of collective agreements (5 years for company collective labour agreements and 10 years for multi-employer collective labour agreements) ,
simplify the procedure of terminating multi-employer collective labour agreements by employers who are unable to implement them for economic reasons.

Revision of OHS regulations

According to the Regulation on the General Provisions on Occupational Safety and Health, the temperature at the work place cannot exceed:

28°C for low or moderate metabolic rate work and in office spaces;
25°C for work with a high metabolic rate;
22°C for work with a very high metabolic rate, unless it is impossible for technological reasons.

In other words, employers must ensure proper technological solutions to lower the temperature accordingly, and if this is impossible, they must apply other organisational measures, depending on the conditions and nature of work, including measures laid down in the appendix to the Regulation.

The above organisational measures will require cooperation of the employer and the trade union in the company, and if there is no such union – cooperation with the employees’ representatives and consultations with the doctor responsible for preventive health care of employees. In addition, the draft regulation obliges employers to adapt their work premises and update their risk assessment documentation according to the requirements set out in the regulation by 1 June 2025.

Current comments on the draft regulation raise the following issues: expected increased costs for employers, vagueness of the regulations regarding the application of the metabolic rate and the method of measuring temperature itself.

New definition of workplace bullying

The Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy has released a bill amending the definition of workplace bullying. The main focus has been on the persistence of the bully's actions, while duration will no longer be a major factor in determining the existence of workplace bullying. The existence of workplace bullying will also be independent of the bully’s intention or the occurrence of a specific consequence. According to the bill, incidental and one-off actions are excluded from the definition of workplace bullying.

The employer will be obliged to implement preventive measures, detect and respond to workplace bullying and support victims. The Work Rules (and if the employer is not obligated to prepare them – the inhouse communication) will have to include provisions on preventing workplace bullying and discrimination.

According to the bill, employees who have been bullied can seek damages amounting to at least six times their remuneration. The following factors will decide whether the behaviour in question constitutes workplace bullying: objective impact on the employee and their subjective feelings or reactions, as long as they are reasonable. Employers will be able to exempt themselves from civil liability provided that the bully has not been the victim's superior and the employer has implemented appropriate preventive measures against workplace bullying.

Wage transparency

A Members’ of Parliament bill to amend the Labour Code – connected with the implementation of Directive (EU) 2023/970 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 May 2023 to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms – introduces major obligations for employers in relation to the employees’ remuneration.

The bill lets employees request information on their individual pay grade and the average remuneration of employees according to their gender, who perform the same work or work of equal value. The employer must respond to the request within 14 days. The employer will have to inform the employees annually of the possibility of filing the request mentioned above.

Additionally, the employer’s communication must contain the remuneration range for the position which the announcement concerns. The employer will also not be able to forbid the employees to disclose information on their remuneration.

The employer's new duty will be to ensure that employees have access to the criteria used to determine remuneration levels. The criteria must be objective and gender neutral. Employers with less than 50 employees may be exempted from this obligation.

Currently, the bill has been sent to the Extraordinary Committee on Amendments to Codifications.

Additional parental leave for parents of premature babies

In March, the Labour Code will be amended to introduce supplementary maternity leave in the case of premature babies or in the case the baby is hospitalised after birth. The duration of the supplementary leave depends on how long the baby stays in hospital – each week of hospitalisation equals an additional week of supplementary leave:

up to 15 weeks in the case of babies born before the end of the 28th week of pregnancy or with a birth weight of no more than 1,000 grams,
up to 8 weeks for babies born after the 28th and before the 37th week of pregnancy and with a birth weight of more than 1,000 grams,
up to 8 weeks for babies born after the 37th week of pregnancy and in the case of the baby's hospitalisation for at least 2 days between the 5th and 28th day after birth.

Supplementary leave may be used by either the mother or the father after maternity leave has been used. This leave is granted once on the basis of an application filed 21 days before the end of the maternity leave at the latest.

Labour law – legal advice

If you have any questions about the upcoming changes in labour laws, you are welcome to contact us. Rödl & Partner has been supporting employers in abiding by the law for years. We advise Polish and foreign companies employing personnel in Poland.