Poland: Remuneration due to an employee not required to report for duty in the event of termination of an employment contract on the basis of a mutual agreement

In the case decided by the Polish Supreme Court the parties of an employment relationship concluded an agreement on termination of the employment contract. The parties decided that the employee would not be required to report for duty in the period between the conclusion of the agreement and the actual termination. Moreover, they decided that the employee would be entitled to remuneration for this period, but did not decide how to calculate the remuneration. The employer paid the basic salary to the employee, while the employee demanded the average salary calculated on the basis of the remuneration for the last three months.

In the grounds of the judgment the Supreme Court stated that labor law provisions do not regulate the method of determining the remuneration in such cases. Therefore, it is the consistent will of the parties stipulated in the content of the agreement on termination of the employment contract which decides how to calculate the remuneration for this period. In some cases, the sole circumstances of conclusion of an agreement on termination might be enough to determine the will of the parties and, as a result, the method of calculation of the remuneration.

However, if the parties have not made any decisions in the matter of remuneration for this period, the Supreme Court states that in such cases the remuneration might be calculated on the basis of art. 81 of Polish Labor Code, which regulates the matter of remuneration for readiness for work in cases of work stoppages. Therefore, for the time when an employee is not required to report for duty, between conclusion of an agreement on termination of an employment contract and the actual termination, the employee shall be entitled to remuneration resulting from his or her personal remuneration grade setting out an hourly or monthly rate, and if this component of remuneration was not established when setting the remuneration conditions – 60 per cent of the employee’s remuneration.

– sentence of the Polish Supreme Court of March 6th 2018 (II PK 86/17)