The employer can show that the employee by his/her behaviour agreed to accept less favourable pay conditions

The final judgment ended a 3-year labour dispute, in which the employee asserted claims related to the employment relationship, including claims for allowances, severance pay and jubilee awards, taking the regulations of the Collective Labour Agreement as the basis for settlement. At the same time, it pointed out that the change in remuneration conditions introduced at the employer in 2003, was an unfavourable change, which required a change notice in order to be valid.

In the course of the dispute, the lawyers of the law firm demonstrated that despite the registration of the 1990 remuneration agreement in the Register of Collective Labour Agreements, maintained by the State Labour Inspectorate, the document does not have such an attribute and is only a remuneration regulation, and therefore the entry in the Register of Collective Labour Agreements was unauthorized.

The Regional Court of Rzeszow also fully shared one of the lawyers of the law firm’s opinions, that although the remuneration conditions established in 2003 were of a less favourable nature for the employee than those previously in force, and in this respect the employee did not receive a changing notice, nevertheless in this case it had to be assumed that the change was made by agreement of the parties, which means that the employee’s claim was not entitled to it.

The court of second instance assumed that the agreement of the parties with regard to the employee’s acceptance of less favourable pay terms could be determined on the basis of the circumstances of the employee’s behaviour, thus taking into account, among other things, whether the employee raises objections to the new pay terms, to the amount of remuneration paid to him, etc.

In this way, the law firm’s lawyers settled another labour disputes at this employer, based on an analogous factual and legal basis.