Industrial action and disputes in Poland

The right to strike is ensured by the Constitution and the International Labour Organization Conventions (ratified by Poland, and thus binding). In particular, the Act on Resolving Collective Disputes of 1991 defines the terms and conditions of a strike. In order to initiate a strike, the following conditions need to be met.

• The collective dispute has not been resolved due to failed negotiations and unsuccessful mediation.

• A possibility of a strike should be mentioned in the notification of the collective dispute delivered to the employer, and the strike cannot be initiated earlier than 14 days after the notification.

• While making the decision to initiate a strike, the employee representation in the collective dispute should take into consideration whether the demands are proportional to the potential losses that the strike can cause.

A strike can be called despite not meeting the abovementioned conditions if the employer’s unlawful actions prevented negotiations or mediation or if the employer dissolves the employment relationship with the leader of the strike.

A collective dispute (spór zbiorowy) is an industrial dispute that emerges as a result of a disagreement between the employee representation (trade unions) and the employer over issues such as working conditions, pay or social benefits, and rights and the freedom of association of employees or other groups of workers entitled to trade union membership. Certain occupational groups do not have the right to enter into collective dispute: policemen and functionaries of the Border Guard (Straż Graniczna), State Penitentiary Service (Służba Więzienna), State Fire Service and the Superior Chamber of Control (state auditor).

If the mediation process does not appear to be leading to a resolution of the collective dispute within the legal time frame (the ‘grace period’ of two weeks for seeking a resolution of the dispute by means of negotiations and/or mediation), the union organisation that has initiated the collective dispute has the right to call a one-time warning strike lasting no longer than two hours.

To defend the rights and interests of employees who do not have the right the strike, trade unions in other workplaces can initiate a solidarity strike lasting no longer than half a working day.

The law stipulates that other forms of industrial action can be resorted to if the legal proceedings envisaged by the law for the collective dispute resolution produced no result, despite having been duly performed. Those ‘other forms of protest action’ are not explicitly named but have to meet the following conditions: they cause no harm to health and life, cause no interruption to work and do not violate the law. Employees who do not enjoy the right to strike can resort to those ‘other forms of protest action’ too.

Farmers have a right to protest according to specific rules set by the farmers’ trade unions.

There are other forms of industrial action not named explicitly by the law but recognised in the official reporting and domestic literature: work-to-rule, refusal to do overtime, work stoppage, blockade, occupation and hunger protest.

Employees working for the state, central government administration, local public administration, courts of law and public prosecutor offices do not enjoy the right to strike. Furthermore, there are a number of workplace types where no strikes are allowed, including the police, armed forces, intelligence services, Border Guard, State Penitentiary Service, Customs (Służba Celno-Skarbowa) and the State Fire Service.

Developments in industrial action, 2017–2022

Notes: * Of these, 1,520 were in the education sector. ** Of these, 9,673 were in the education sector. *** Of these, 9,046 were in the education sector. **** Of these, 19,294 were in the education sector.

Collective dispute resolution mechanisms

The main collective industrial dispute resolution mechanisms are described below.

Negotiations: The parties to the collective dispute negotiate on their own to seek a resolution of the dispute.

Mediation: Following the failure of negotiations, the parties request that a mediator (from the official list of mediators maintained by the MRPiPS) be appointed, by mutual consent of both parties. If the parties are unable to consent, the mediator is appointed by the MRPiPS unilaterally.

Arbitration: If the mediation is unproductive, instead of calling a strike (to which they are entitled), the employee side may request that the dispute is settled by the Council of Social Arbitration (Kolegium Arbitrażu Społecznego), a special organ of a court of law.

Goodwill mission: A goodwill mission is a special dispute resolution path for settling rows in employment relations that, for legal reasons (the scope of issues to be subjected to collective disputes is explicitly named by the law), cannot escalate into a formal collective dispute. Goodwill missions can be carried out by the regional social dialogue council.

There has been no significant changes in legislation as of the first quarter of 2023.

Individual dispute resolution mechanisms

There are two main ways to settle individual disputes:

1. judicially – that is, before labour courts, which recognise cases and resolve disputes authoritatively

2. non-judicially, through either of the following:

• a workplace-level conciliation committee (zakładowa komisja pojednawcza), at the request of the employee, who may seek to resolve the dispute in such a way before going to court – the body is established by the employer and company-level trade union (or solely by the employer if there is no union) and must settle the dispute within 14 days

• mediation at the request of the employee or the employer, who may seek to resolve the dispute in such a way before going to court (mediation may be undertaken even while the case is in court) – mediation of this kind is regulated not by labour law, but by civil law

Use of dispute resolution mechanisms, 2012–2018

Note: No data on the number of disputes and disagreements being settled by means of arbitration and goodwill missions are available, but the MRPiPS states that the occurrence of the former is very rare and no information on the latter is accessible.

Source: Ministerstwo Rodziny, Pracy i Polityki Społecznej (2023)