A remake of the anti-crisis law

The Polish government has recently (end of May) passed a resolution prosaically named: “An act on separate measures in order to mitigate the impact of the economic crisis for both employees and business owners aimed at the workplace protection”. The draft law is in fact a remake of the anti-crisis law, which expired in 2011.

The refreshed and newly adopted regulations provide financial subsidies to companies with revenue decline allowing them continuation of wage payments and further employment of their staff. Entitled are companies whose turnover over the past 12 months preceding the date of application shrank by at least 15%. Accordingly, they will receive financial subsidies to partially finance the employees’ salaries during the period of economic standstill and partially compensate smaller salaries due to reduction of working hours.

In the draft law the economic standstill is defined as the period, during which the employee due to independent from her/him reasons cannot fulfill his/her contractual obligations. Beyond that the companies may also use the financial subsidies for the payment of the employer’s share of social security taxes. The financial grants for the companies will only be paid for a period of up to 6 months. The grants do not need to be repaid. The main requirement demands that during the payment period no employee is fired and the grants are used for the intended purpose only.

Furthermore, the draft law includes the financial subsidies for the purpose of employees’ training. A company that uses the period of economic standstill or reduction of working hours, caused by the lower level of incoming orders, to train its employees may demand from the local government the refunding of 80% of the training costs. The amount of the grant is limited to max. 300% of the average salary per employee in the given company.