Will the National Labour Inspectorate (PIP) be able to convert civil law contracts into employment contracts?

According to media reports, the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy together with the National Labour Inspectorate (Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy, PIP) plans a significant expansion of the powers of PIP inspectors, which would thereby relieve Labour Courts from adjudicating matters concerning the establishment of employment relationships. Representatives of the Ministry confirm intensified work on the amendment of the PIP Act, but do not provide further details. Currently, there is also no official information on the Sejm’s websites about the submission of the bill to the Chancellery.

Current Situation

The current legal status allows PIP inspectors only to file a lawsuit concerning the establishment of an employment relationship on behalf of the interested party, and to intervene in such proceedings at any stage with the plaintiff’s consent. Officers may also, under the provisions of the PIP Act, issue requests to the employer to change the legal basis of the work performed. The broadest competence granted is conducting proceedings in cases of misdemeanors when it is found that the employer unjustifiably concluded a civil-law contract with an employee, although in fact the work was performed under an employment contract. Such proceedings may end with a fine or referral of the case to the competent district court.

Unimplemented Changes

The plan to change the competences of PIP officers is not an original government idea. In 2021, a similar parliamentary bill amending the PIP Act (print no. 1134) was submitted to the Sejm, which also proposed granting PIP officers the power to issue constitutive administrative decisions. However, the project stalled in the Sejm after a negative government opinion, which criticized the apparent effectiveness of this solution – according to the government, in practice courts would begin to handle appeals against administrative decisions made by PIP officers. The government considered that the current competences regulated in Articles 63¹ – 63² of the Code of Civil Procedure sufficiently protect employees – the PIP inspector in such cases has quite extensive powers similar to those of a prosecutor.

Summary

Despite modest press reports, it is already questionable whether the rather small number of inspectors (a little over one and a half thousand) allows for effective use of potentially broad powers. Will the amendment to the Act in any way affect labour relations between employees and employers? Finally, the open question remains what those directly concerned – employees employed under civil-law contracts – think about these plans.