Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

education vouchers for workers 45+ and unemployed aged 50+ participating in further
training, quicker job placement of older unemployed on the first on second labour market
and sanctions to disabled persons who reject taking up gainful employment.
Poland exhibits a pronounced seniority principle in wage formation. This inhibits the
employment of persons in higher age brackets (EC 2007: 90-1). Workers may be however
dismissed easily; missing competencies of the worker and economic problems of the
employer suffice as reasons for the dismissal. The required period of notice is short.
Regulations concerning mass lay-offs are however very rigid (Kryńska 2007: 3-4) in order
to contain the frequent utilisation of mass lay-off during restructuring.
Protection against dismissals covers workers four years prior to standard or early
retirement age (raised from two years with the law of 30.04.2004) 26 . However, the current
PO-PSL government plans to lower this age again to two years and advertises that as a
measure to activate and help older workers. In distinction to German labour law, the Polish
law regulates the level of severance payments in case of mass lay-offs and when workers
leave on retirement.
The anti-discrimination legislation based on Directive 2000/78/EC was implemented in
Poland with the law of 14. Nov. 2003. It will however, as is the case in Germany, leave
untouched several regulations in Polish law and practice:
- seniority wages (based on tenure) are not regarded as discrimination, as a longer work
experience enables the worker to perform better (Bydłoń 2006),
- termination of the employment contract of workers who have filled the standard
retirement age and 20/25 qualifying years. This provision was incorporated already in
the second half of the 50ties in Polish labour law (Urbaniak 1998: 191). The antidiscrimination
law has rendered this practice illegal, but above mentioned criteria may
be still used as a basis for selecting workers for mass lay-offs (Sadlik 2007), and the
High Court has even accepted that criteria with regard to regular termination of
employment (Maniewska 2006).
Unlike in Germany, there are no criteria how to select workers for personnel reductions
except of the rulings in the Code of Labour Law that they have to be “socially acceptable”
(Sadlik 2007).
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The dismissal protection is related to the earliest possible retirement age (http://prawopracy.pl/ochrona_przedemerytalna_wiek_przedemerytalny-a-39.html),
but my firm studies have shown that
many employers are not sure how to interpret the rule and, for security´s sake, regard the dismissal protection
as valid from the earliest possible retirement age up to standard retirement age.
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