Not only PPK
In the comments for Dziennik Gazeta Prawna (The Daily Legal Newspaper), Marcin Cetnarowicz summarizes which regulations from 2019 are most important for employers and employees:
Employee Capital Plans (PPK)
The goal of the PPK Act, to encourage us to start savings for our retirement, should be seen as an undoubtedly positive move. However, the legislative quality of the PPK Act leaves a lot to be desired and deserves a poor grade. The act is crude, and is incomprehensible to the average employer or employee. Despite several good months of work on this regulation, gaps and errors were not avoided, only part of which were repaired by the amendment to the Act of June 2019. The Amendment, which, let us remind you, entered into force only a few days before the adoption of the Act by the largest employers.
From the employers’ perspective, the big problem is that the effects of opting out from participation in the PPK has not been fully thought-out . We would like to remind you that in accordance with the Act, in the case of opting out from the PPK, payments for a participating employee are not made from the month in which he or she submitted their resignation declaration, and payments collected in that month are refundable. This model forces payroll adjustments and generates lots of unnecessary work.
A big problem in practice will also be the difficultly to handle a delay in collecting advance payments for PIT (personal income tax) on financial payments by employers. Nobody thought about calculating and paying off payments in line with tax regulations.
At one of the meetings in the PPK case, PFR (Polish Development Fund) president Paweł Borys admitted that he adheres to the philosophy of “learning by doing”. Carrying out work on the PPK project according to this philosophy does not seem to be the best idea.
Data Processing in Employment (GDPR)
The new rules on the processing of personal data in employment should generally be assessed positively. Of particularly important from the perspective of employers and employees, is the regulation requiring an employee’s consent to the employer’s processing of his personal data, including what is termed sensitive data.
A big problem that emerged during the passing of the amendment is the admissibility of a test of the sobriety of an employee by their employer. This issue is “begging” for the quick intervention of the legislator, especially since it has a direct impact on work safety.
Presidential Novella
From the employees’ perspective, the positive changes consist of extending the criteria for what may be considered as discriminatory, thus enabling compensation claims for bullying without the need to terminate the employment relationship or obtaining a court decision replacing an employment certificate. However, it will not be possible for some time to see if and what impact the amendment will have in the real world, especially on judicial practice. The deadlines for requesting a rectification of a work certificate and an appeal to the labor court were reasonably extended to 14 days. The existing seven-day deadlines were too short and could deprive an employee of legal protection.
The full text of the article is available on the pages of Dziennik Gazeta Prawna (The Daily Legal Newspaper) (access for registered subscribers) only in the Polish version.
