articles - Labour and employment law

Work is underway on a bill implementing the EU’s Whistleblower Directive (2019/1937). It is not yet clear whether the directive will be implemented into Polish law on time (by 17 December 2021), but many companies are already drafting the necessary documents and organisational procedures.

The image of a natural person is a protected right. In Poland, it is subject to protection as a personal data, right to personality , but is also subject to copyright protection. Each of these regulations has a somewhat different presumption and terms of image use. An employer, in seeking to use the image of an employee in advertising, must ensure to meet requirements imposed by each of these regimes as well as observe requirements specified by all legal provisions applied in this regard. In this article we seek to address questions concerning copyright principles under which an employer...

Since 16 July 2020, companies transferring personal data from the EU to the US, including employees' personal data, have had a difficult nut to crack. The Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated the decision in the Privacy Shield case, depriving companies of the possibility of basing data transfers to the US on this basis. However, the Court's judgment (so-called Schrems II) may have serious consequences for companies transferring data to other countries outside the European Economic Area as well.

GDPR rules require certain entities to appoint a Data Protection Officer. Where an organisation considers that such an obligation does not apply to it, it should properly document this.

Many employers believe that they have the right to require their employees to provide information on their disability. This is because employers have an obligation to ensure that employees with disabilities can exercise particular privileges. The Personal Data Protection Office ('PDPO') examined this issue in its position paper published on 24 August 2020, where it reminded that it is up to the employee to decide whether or not to provide such information.

In its paper published on 30 June 2020, the Data Protection Authority (“DPA”) expressed the view that the data of management board members representing a legal person are protected by the GDPR as the data of natural persons who are identifiable by using data disclosed in the National Court Register.