Abstract
<p>The COVID-19 epidemic has had a substantial impact on Polish legislation since the beginning of 2020. The economic slowdown and the consequent fall in the state budget revenue are among the anticipated effects of the epidemic. As a result, provisions introducing <em>lex specialis</em> to the Labour Code and certain employment regulations specifying dissolution of employment relationships in some public administration organisations became part of the COVID-19 Act. The new legal construct comes down to extensive facilitation in the process of redundancies for employers dismissing their employees. The protective function of labour law provisions insofar as it upholds duration of the employment relationship is consequently restricted. Provisions of the COVID-19 Act in this respect are unacceptable. Each regulation should arise from objectively identified needs to legally govern social relationships and should not inflate laws or undermine citizens’ trust in legislation. The postulate of this legal direction of determining social relationships is particularly important with regard to relationships of employment, in particular, those founded on appointment in public administration. The possibility of identical treatment of employees hired on various legal grounds merely appears to conform with the constitutional protection of equality in law. Without detriment to employers’ right to determine employment levels, the new regulations in connection with the COVID-19 epidemic seem unnecessary, since their objectives can be attained by application of normal remedies provided for by labour law.</p>
Highlights
Labour law specialists generally accept the view of the labour law’s protective function.[1]
The protective function of labour law consists in the impossibility of ignoring law to the employee’s detriment and is associated with the principle of employee privilege,[3] derived from Article 18 §§ 1 and 2 of the Labour Code.[4]
Lowering the limit of severance pay due to the employee to ten times the minimum wages determined on the basis of minimum wage regulations, introduced by force of shield 4.0 provisions to Article 15gd of the COVID-19 Act, constitutes a backward step in protection of employees’ interests that adversely affects the protective function of labour law
Summary
Labour law specialists generally accept the view of the labour law’s protective function.[1]. Provisions of the COVID-19 Act insofar as they apply to dissolution of employment relationships, reduction of working time and proportional pay cuts of civil service employees undermine the employees’ confidence in the state and the law it creates They are contrary to the principle of legal certainty, derived from Article 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and secondary to the general principle of the rule of law, and the derivative principles – protection of justly acquired rights and interests in progress as well as assurance of legal security.[35] They violate the state’s duty to protect work, declared in Article. Lowering the limit of severance pay due to the employee to ten times the minimum wages determined on the basis of minimum wage regulations, introduced by force of shield 4.0 provisions to Article 15gd of the COVID-19 Act, constitutes a backward step in protection of employees’ interests that adversely affects the protective function of labour law
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