On women’s rights during a conference at Polish Parliament

“Legislation good for women and families in Poland and in the EU” was the subject of a conference held at the Column Hall of the Polish Parliament on 4 June 2008. It was organized by the Parliamentary Club of PiS (“Law and Justice”), in cooperation with the European Parliament’s group “Union for Europe of the Nations”. The conference was attended by Bożena Borys-Szopa – Chief Labour Inspector, members of parliament, experts, representatives of non-governmental organizations and state institutions which deal with addressing social problems.

“In our country women are well-educated and active, yet they still have to fight a lot of unfair stereotypes” – wrote the Polish President, Lech Kaczyński, in his letter to the conference participants. The conference was held under the honorary auspices of the President of Poland. He emphasized that women and families in Poland need new legislative solutions, which would “make social policy friendlier to them, would confirm their rights, improve economic situation and create new prospects of development”.

Jarosław Kaczyński, President of “Law and Justice” party, said that his party had always advocated equal status of women and men in social life. Public authorities have to support family-friendly policies and complete equality of rights for women. He also mentioned the necessity to counteract violence and introduce measures which would allow women to reconcile motherhood with professional life.

The conference was divided into thematic sessions: Women in the labour market, Women in business, Women in difficult life situations, and the 21st-century family. During the first above-said session, the head of National Labour Inspectorate Bożena Borys-Szopa took part in a panel discussion devoted to the subject of bullying. She discussed the issue of abusing employee subordination in the light of NLI’s inspections.

She stated that workplace mobbing as one of pathologies exiting in labour relations is the subject of inspection and preventative actions carried out by National Labour Inspectorate. Yet, due to the specific features of infringements in this area, the role of a regulatory authority is very limited. While making assessments of employer practices from the point of view of their unlawfulness, labour inspectors face the problem of lack of clear criteria which would enable them to unequivocally distinguish harassment from the superior’s exercise of the right to make workers follow orders or demand discipline in the workplace. Moreover, inspectors have very limited possibility to apply legal measures in cases when bullying occurs. While informing complainants of facts determined during visits, inspectors most often instruct them about the possibility to bring an action to a labour court asking for award of damages from their employers.

Last year National Labour Inspectorate received 583 complaints with a charge of bullying; they made 2.4 percent of all the complaints received by NLI. In the current year the labour inspection registered 277 such complaints – the largest number from employees of the manufacturing, retail trade and repair, real estate management and health care sectors.