On 25 November, the Polish government published the principles that will form the basis of its new legislation implementing the outstanding provisions of the Pay Transparency Directive. Readers of our blog will be aware that Poland has already published legislation to implement the transparency provisions in the Directive (see our previous blog) and these will come into force from 24 December 2025.
Poland will be implementing the Directive in a standalone piece of legislation rather than by making changes to the Polish Labour Code. As expected, it is clear that the aim of the legislators is not to go beyond the minimum requirements set out in the Directive and to implement it largely “as is”. In other words, as appears to be the case in many other European member states, there will be no “gold-plating” of this Directive.
Below is what we know so far about the new legislation:
- Categories of worker: All employers (irrespective of size) will be required to have salary structures in place that allow them to determine whether employees are performing comparable work. Four basic criteria must be used for these purposes: skills, effort, level of responsibility and working conditions, but employers will also be able to use additional criteria, provided they are objective and gender neutral. As highlighted below, a failure to carry out this exercise will put employers at risk of fines.
- Transparency of pay setting: Employers will be obliged to make any criteria for setting individual salaries, salary levels and pay progression easily available to employees. Employers with fewer than 50 employees will only be required to provide information about pay progression upon request from an employee.
- Right to information: Employees will have the right to information about their own individual salaries as well as the average salary levels of other employees performing the same work or work of equal value.
- Pay gap reporting obligations: Employers with at least 100 employees will be obliged to carry out gender pay gap analysis and reporting will be done using tools provided by the Central Statistical Office.
- Employee representatives: Employers will be obliged to cooperate with trade unions and employee representatives in relation to joint pay assessments and when undertaking steps to remedy any gender pay gaps of 5% or more. These new employee participation rights reflect current practices in Poland, i.e. an employer must deal with a trade union (if it exists) and, if not, elected employee representatives. It is not yet clear whether employee representatives will have any other information and/or consultation rights.
- Fines: Fines for non-compliance will range from PLN 2,000 to PLN 60,000 and will be payable where an employer (or a person acting on their behalf) fails to: assess the value of individual job positions or types of work; provide employees with access to information about the relevant pay criteria; provide employees with certain pay information upon request; prepare a gender pay gap report or perform a joint pay assessment; take remedial action to remedy a gender pay gap. Fines will also be payable if an employer includes provisions in an employment contract which seek to prevent an employee from disclosing the amount of remuneration they receive.
We are now waiting for the draft legislation to assess the specific obligations imposed on employers, but no date has yet been given as to when this will be published for consultation.