A German automotive supplier operating a production facility near Wrocław decides to consolidate two Polish sites into one. The restructuring means eliminating 85 positions over six weeks. The HR director assumes that Polish collective dismissal rules mirror the EU Directive framework she knows from Germany. They do not – and the gap between assumption and Polish statutory reality can invalidate every notice served.
Polish collective dismissal law requires employers to complete a structured consultation with trade unions or employee representatives before serving any individual termination notice. The consultation period lasts at least 20 days. Employers must simultaneously notify the district labour office (powiatowy urząd pracy, PUP) in writing, and the entire procedure must be completed before the first notice takes legal effect.
This guide walks through the procedure step by step: who triggers the obligation, how consultation works, what the PUP notification must contain, where employers make costly errors, and how three business scenarios – manufacturing, IT, and foreign investor – play out differently under the same statute. Timelines, thresholds, and practical checkpoints are included throughout.
When does the collective dismissal obligation arise?
Polish employment law – specifically the ustawa o szczególnych zasadach rozwiązywania z pracownikami stosunków pracy z przyczyn niedotyczących pracowników (Act on Special Rules for Terminating Employment Relationships for Reasons Not Attributable to Employees, the Collective Dismissal Act) – sets numeric thresholds that trigger the full procedure. The obligation applies when an employer with at least 20 employees intends to terminate contracts within 30 days for reasons not attributable to employees. The thresholds are: 10 employees where the workforce is under 100; 10 percent of employees where the workforce is 100 to 299; and 30 employees where the workforce is 300 or more.
Counting matters enormously. The 30-day window is rolling, not calendar-month fixed. An employer who dismisses nine employees in week one and six more in week three has crossed the threshold by week three – triggering retroactive obligations on notices already served. The National Labour Inspectorate (Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy, PIP) applies exactly this arithmetic during audits.
Mutual termination agreements (porozumienia rozwiązujące) count toward the threshold when the employer initiates them. This surprises many HR teams. A manufacturing plant in Mazowieckie that persuaded 12 employees to sign "voluntary" exit agreements in autumn 2024 later faced PIP scrutiny because management had initiated every conversation – bringing the total above the statutory floor.
Fixed-term contracts terminated on their natural expiry date do not count. Neither do redundancies caused by the employee. The threshold calculation excludes those. But any employer-driven termination for economic, organisational, or technological reasons falls inside the perimeter.
How does the consultation process work?
Once the threshold is met or anticipated, the employer must open written consultations with all trade unions operating at the workplace, or – where no union exists – with employee representatives elected under the Kodeks pracy (Labour Code). The consultation must begin before any decision on the scope of dismissals is finalised. Starting consultation after management has signed off on a headcount list is a procedural defect that Polish courts treat as material.
The written notification to unions or representatives must contain: the reasons for the planned dismissals; the number and professional groups of employees to be made redundant; the number and professional groups of all employees; the period over which dismissals will be carried out; the proposed selection criteria; and the proposed severance pay terms. Omitting any element restarts the clock.
- Reasons for redundancy – economic, organisational, or technological
- Headcount breakdown by role and department
- Proposed timeline and phasing of terminations
- Selection criteria where not all employees in a group are dismissed
- Severance entitlements above the statutory minimum, if offered
Unions have 20 days to reach an agreement (porozumienie) with the employer. If no agreement is reached, the employer issues a unilateral set of rules (regulamin) and may proceed. The 20-day period is a floor, not a ceiling – courts have voided dismissals where employers closed consultations on day 19. (One day matters here, and employment lawyers in Warsaw regularly see this error.)
Where employee representatives must be elected – because no union exists – the employer is responsible for organising that election. The election itself takes time. Factoring in two to three weeks for election logistics before consultation even begins is prudent planning.
What must the PUP notification include, and when?
The district labour office notification is a parallel obligation, not a post-consultation formality. Under the Collective Dismissal Act, the employer must notify the PUP simultaneously with opening consultations – not after reaching agreement. The notification must mirror the consultation document: reasons, numbers, groups, timeline, and selection criteria. A failure to notify simultaneously is an independent violation, distinct from any consultation defect.
After consultation concludes – whether by agreement or by the employer's unilateral regulamin – the employer must send a second, supplementary notification to the PUP. This second notice must include the outcome of consultations, the text of any agreement reached, and the final list of measures to support dismissed employees (outplacement, retraining offers, or enhanced severance). The PUP uses this information to prepare re-employment support.
The earliest date on which individual termination notices may be served is 30 days after the PUP receives the first notification. This 30-day moratorium is absolute. Notices served on day 28 are invalid. We secured a reversal of a disputed mass-termination procedure for a logistics client in Lower Silesia (spring 2025), where the employer had served notices on day 29 – one day short – and the entire round of dismissals had to be restarted.
Employers operating across multiple voivodeships face a practical complication. Each site's PUP is the relevant authority for employees at that location. A Warsaw headquarters cannot send a single national notification to the Mazowieckie PUP and consider the obligation satisfied for a Kraków site. Each location requires its own filing.
What are the most common procedural mistakes?
Three patterns account for the majority of collective dismissal litigation in Poland. First: starting consultation after the internal decision is already made. Polish courts distinguish between genuine consultation – where the outcome can still influence the employer's decision – and pro forma consultation designed merely to satisfy the statute. Where the employer's board has already approved a final headcount reduction plan, judges have found that no real consultation occurred, rendering subsequent notices void.
Second: miscounting the threshold. Employers in IT environments often run multiple project-based redundancies in parallel streams managed by different business units. Each stream looks sub-threshold to the unit manager. Aggregated at company level, they cross 10 percent within 30 days. The Labour Code and the Collective Dismissal Act both operate at legal-entity level, not business-unit level. The National Court Register (Krajowy Rejestr Sądowy, KRS) entity is the employer for counting purposes.
Third: treating severance pay as discretionary. The Collective Dismissal Act sets mandatory minimum severance: one month's pay for employees with under two years of service; two months' pay for two to eight years; and three months' pay for over eight years – subject to a cap of 15 times the minimum wage. In 2026, the minimum wage is PLN 4,666 gross per month, making the cap approximately PLN 70,000. Employers who omit severance or calculate it on net rather than gross pay face claims before the labour court (sąd pracy) with interest running from the dismissal date.
A mid-size IT firm in Małopolska (winter 2025) ran a restructuring across three project teams simultaneously. Each team's manager filed separate HR documentation. The aggregated total reached 14 percent of the workforce within 28 days. The company had skipped consultation entirely. The resulting labour court proceedings cost more in legal fees and compensation than the severance the firm had sought to avoid.
How do three business scenarios differ in practice?
Manufacturing companies typically have established union structures. Consultation is therefore conducted with one or more trade unions, and the 20-day period is genuinely adversarial. Unions in this sector routinely request extensions beyond 20 days, propose alternative measures (reduced hours, temporary lay-offs under the ustawa antykryzysowa), and negotiate enhanced severance. Budget at least 45 to 60 days from the decision to notify through to the first valid notice. Selection criteria must be documented in writing and applied consistently – courts scrutinise whether criteria such as "performance" or "attitude" were objectively measurable.
IT and professional services companies often have no trade union. The employer must organise a representative election. With 50 or fewer employees, a single representative suffices; above 50, the number scales with workforce size. Once elected, the representative has the same 20-day consultation right as a union. The practical timeline is shorter than manufacturing – perhaps 35 to 45 days total – but the employer bears the administrative burden of the election. Skipping the election and proceeding without any representative is the most common defect in this sector.
Foreign investors face an additional layer. A company with employees holding a work permit Poland or an EU Blue Card must factor in that dismissal of a third-country national terminates the legal basis for their residence permit within a defined period. The employer is obliged to notify the relevant voivode (provincial governor) of the termination. Failure to do so creates immigration compliance exposure independent of the labour law procedure. An employment lawyer Warsaw-based can coordinate both filings simultaneously, but the timelines are not identical – the immigration notification is immediate, while the labour moratorium runs 30 days.
For a foreign investor restructuring a Polish subsidiary, corporate governance obligations intersect with the dismissal procedure. The subsidiary's supervisory board or management board may need to formally approve the restructuring plan before consultation begins. Timing that board resolution correctly – after the threshold is anticipated but before consultation opens – is a sequencing matter that affects the validity of the entire procedure. The guide on corporate governance for Poland subsidiaries covers the board decision framework in detail.
What should employers prepare before opening consultation?
Preparation quality determines whether the 20-day consultation period is genuinely productive or whether it collapses into procedural disputes. Employers who arrive at the consultation table with incomplete documentation routinely find that unions use information requests to extend the timeline. Under Polish labour law, unions may request additional information during consultation, and the employer must respond within a reasonable time – effectively pausing practical progress.
- Complete workforce census: names, roles, seniority, contract type, and protected status (e.g., pre-retirement protection, parental leave, whistleblower Poland protections under the Whistleblower Protection Act)
- Draft selection criteria matrix with objective, measurable indicators
- Severance calculation spreadsheet verified against the current minimum wage
- Draft PUP notification ready to file on day one of consultation
- Outplacement or retraining offer, even if minimal, to satisfy the supplementary PUP notification requirement
Protected employees require individual attention. Employees on maternity leave, parental leave, or sick leave exceeding a defined period cannot be dismissed during the protection period. Employees within four years of retirement age are protected against dismissal where the employment relationship would have continued until retirement. Trade union officers enjoy additional protection requiring union consent before dismissal. Each protected employee must be identified before the headcount list is finalised.
UK-headquartered companies running Polish operations face a specific documentation challenge after Brexit: their group HR policies may reference EU Directive thresholds that differ from Polish statutory minimums. The guide on employment law compliance for UK companies in Poland addresses how group policies interact with local mandatory rules. Polish law applies as lex loci laboris – the law of the place of work – and cannot be displaced by a foreign governing law clause in the employment contract.
Foreign investors relocating staff during or after a restructuring should also review the framework in the guide on global mobility: relocating employees to Poland from the Netherlands, which covers permit continuity and social security coordination relevant where redundant employees are offered roles elsewhere in the group.
To receive an expert assessment of your collective dismissal timeline and documentation, contact info@kordeckipartners.com.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Can an employer start serving individual termination notices while consultation is still ongoing?
A: No. Individual notices may not be served until the consultation period has concluded – either by agreement or by the expiry of the 20-day period – and the 30-day moratorium following PUP notification has elapsed. Serving notices during consultation is a material procedural defect. Polish labour courts consistently treat such notices as ineffective, meaning the employment relationship has not been validly terminated and the employer remains liable for wages during the disputed period.
Q: How long does the entire collective dismissal procedure take from the first internal decision to the last valid notice?
A: In a straightforward case with no trade union and no protected employees, the minimum timeline is approximately 50 to 55 days: two to three weeks for electing employee representatives, 20 days of consultation, and the 30-day PUP moratorium running concurrently with or following consultation. Where trade unions are present and negotiations are adversarial, 75 to 90 days is a realistic planning horizon. Costs include mandatory severance (up to three months' pay per employee), potential outplacement commitments, and legal advisory fees for drafting documentation and attending consultation sessions.
Q: Does the collective dismissal procedure apply to a company that is closing entirely, not just restructuring?
A: Yes. The Collective Dismissal Act applies to any employer-driven termination for reasons not attributable to employees, including full liquidation. A company in liquidation that dismisses its entire workforce in one step must still complete consultation and PUP notification if the employee count meets the threshold. The liquidator is the responsible party. One common misconception is that insolvency or liquidation suspends employment law obligations – it does not. The only partial exception applies where the court-appointed administrator obtains a specific court order modifying the timeline, which is narrow and rarely granted.
For a tailored strategy on structuring your collective dismissal procedure, reach out to info@kordeckipartners.com.
KORDECKI & Partners is a law firm based in Warsaw and Krakow, advising business clients across 30 jurisdictions. Our team combines expertise in Polish and international law with a practical approach to employment restructuring, collective dismissal procedures, and workforce compliance. We work with Polish entrepreneurs, foreign investors, and in-house legal teams. To discuss your situation, contact info@kordeckipartners.com.
Disclaimer: This publication is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The information herein should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional legal counsel tailored to your specific circumstances. KORDECKI & Partners assumes no liability for actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this material. For advice regarding your particular situation, please contact info@kordeckipartners.com.