Results of the labour inspectorate’s work in the area of legality of employment

Enforcing legal employment of 5 thousand persons, payment by employers of 12 million zlotys of overdue contributions to social insurance and unpaid contributions for 24 thousand workers to the Labour Fund – are just some results of the year’s activity of labour inspectors in the area of legality of employment. They were presented by Roman Giedrojć, Deputy Chief Labour Inspector responsible for supervision, at the Labour Protection Council’s plenary session chaired by MP Izabela Katarzyna Mrzygłocka on 5 August 2008.

The meeting was also attended by Jarosław Leśniewski, Director of Legality of Employment Department at the Chief Labour Inspectorate.

On 1 July 2008, a year passed from the date on which the Act on National Labour Inspectorate of 13 April 2007 came into force and when labour inspectors took over new tasks related to inspection of legality of employment.

– In was undoubtedly a difficult period which required a full mobilization of the inspectorate to meet great responsibility arising from additional duties – said Roman Giedrojć. – From the perspective of a one-year period when the new provisions were in force, one should positively assess the inclusion of inspection of legality of employment into the competence of NLI.

The thesis about effectiveness of the National Labour Inspectorate’s visits focused on legality of employment is confirmed by the fact that in the past 12-month-period, i.e. from 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008 labour inspectors conducted almost 31% more of such inspections than it was the case with previously responsible services subordinate to provincial authorities. Besides, the NLI identified almost two times more infringements related to running employment agencies and 54% more infringements related to non-payment of contributions to the Labour Fund.

In total, from 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008 labour inspectors conducted over 26 thousand inspections of legality of employment. They focused not only on legality of employment of Polish and foreign citizens, but also on compliance with provisions of the Act on the promotion of employment and labour market institutions, and on lawful operations of employment agencies.

During such visits, labour inspectors checked legality of employment of almost 2 million persons by almost 25 thousand employers and entrepreneurs. Inspections of payment of contributions to the Labour Fund covered almost 380 thousand persons. The irregularities were found in more than half of the inspected companies. Illegal employment was identified in every fifth inspected entity, and failures to pay contributions to the Labour Fund or their delayed payment – in every sixth entity.

Illegal performance of work by foreigners was proved by inspectors in every tenth company employing foreigners and in every sixth enterprise which employed foreigners who were required to have a permit to work in Poland.

7% of the inspected employment agencies operated illegally, that is they did not have a required certificate. Most of such cases were operations consisting in recruitment for work abroad.

As a result of inspections carried out in the past year, the labour inspectorate revealed almost 8.5 thousand infringements committed by over 4 thousand employers and 2 thousand workers. Inspectors penalised the offenders with over 700 fines to the overall amount of almost 1 million zlotys (their average amount was 1272 zlotys). Over 3.5 thousand motions for penalty were lodged to municipal courts. In majority of such cases valid sentences were already passed and consequently fines were imposed to the amount of about 4 million zlotys.

Almost 250 notifications about suspicion of a crime were sent to prosecutors’ offices. A dominant group were cases related to malicious or obstinate infringing upon employee rights, falsifying of documents and breaching of social insurance provisions.

Moreover, due to determined violations of the law, labour inspectors addressed almost 15 thousand notices to employers ordering them to eliminate identified irregularities which referred to almost 200 thousand persons who performed work in the inspected companies.

Divergence between the type of concluded contracts and the nature of performed work, in other words conclusion of civil law contracts instead of employment contracts was determined by labour inspectors in 1593 companies. Irregularities in this area referred to 12529 persons. By comparison, it was the case for 11683 persons in 2007 and for 8734 persons in 2006. Most companies which were in breach of legal provisions limiting conclusion of civil law contracts were identified in the following sectors: retail trade and repair – 26% of entities covered with inspections, manufacturing – 19% and construction – 17%.