Open salaries as a European standard

Unlike in many EU member states, in Poland the topic of salaries is still taboo. Both customary and legal means of disseminating salary information have still not been adopted. This can be particularly troublesome at the stage of seeking employment, when a candidate tries to find offers that meet his or her requirements, while salary information appears only at a distant stage of recruitment. Various organizations’ compensation policies are often non-transparent or arbitrary, and for cultural reasons it is rarely possible to have a conversation between employees themselves on the subject.

The principle of salary transparency and the employer’s information obligations

The drafters call for the addition of §²¹ to Article 10 of the Labor Code, according to which “Remuneration, as well as its level, shall be public during the employment relationship, as well as before its establishment”. At the same time, the draft envisages providing employees, in proposed Article^{101 of the Code} , with the right to request information from the employer regarding their individual level of remuneration and average levels of remuneration, broken down by gender for categories of employees performing the same work as them or work of equal value. Importantly, it is postulated that the introduced provisions on salary disclosure should also apply to employment relationships established on grounds other than those listed in Article 2 of the Labor Code (employment contract, appointment, election, appointment or cooperative employment contract).

Information on wages before the employment relationship is established

The draft regulation stipulates that when publishing a job offer, the employer will be required to include the amount of the proposed salary level indicating its minimum and maximum amount. Thus, the employer will be obliged to provide, the so-called “forks” and not a specific amount. Such a redaction of the provision seems to give room for abuse, for example, by indicating very extensive amounts of minimum and maximum remuneration, even taking into account that, according to the drafters, this information is to be “based on objective, gender-neutral criteria – provided for a given position”.

How will the proposed changes affect employers?

The obligations imposed on employers would be enforced by expanding the catalog of offenses against employee rights from Article 281 of the Labor Code. Offenses subject to a fine of between PLN 1,000 and PLN 30,000, according to the draft, could include:

1. failure to provide employees with information regarding their individual salary levels and average salary levels,
2. failure to publish information during recruitment about the amount of the proposed salary level with an indication of its minimum and maximum amount,
3. hiring an employee at a salary lower than that provided in the published information on the employee’s employability for the job.

In addition to the aforementioned, other information obligations are to be imposed on employers, which, however, the drafters have not decided to secure with a fine sanction. Among other things, they are to be obliged to provide employees with access to the criteria that are used to determine employees’ salary levels and salary progression, as well as to inform employees, once a year, of their right to receive information regarding their individual salary levels and average salary levels.

Justification of the draft law-is non-transparency of salaries discriminatory?

In the justification for the changes outlined above, the drafters point out that the lack of information about the proposed salary in job offers hits in particular “the groups of employees most vulnerable to unequal and discriminatory treatment: young workers and women”, arguing that this is due to the lack of experience of those entering the labor market, through which they could verify the attractiveness and fairness of job offers. The draft’s authors also draw attention to the differences in earnings between men and women providing work in the same positions – information on salaries, on the other hand, would be expected to eliminate the phenomenon of wage discrimination.

Summary of changes

The proposed changes seem to touch on an important problem noted in the labor market. The proposed bill aims to bring salary disclosure standards in line with European standards. If the proposed changes come into force, they will certainly improve the situation of employees. At the same time, the new legislation will introduce further obligations for employers, which may prove burdensome for them.

The draft law under discussion was referred to the first reading at the session of the Sejm on January 7, 2025, so the legislative process is only at an early stage.