Collective bargaining agreements under scrutiny

The group of persons entitled to apply to the district court, i.e., the labor court competent for the employer’s registered office, with a request to determine whether the content of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) complies with labor law provisions has expanded. Or whether a given agreement was concluded in accordance with the provisions on its conclusion. What do these changes mean?

– Until the National Register of Collective Bargaining Agreements is established, only collective bargaining agreements and additional protocols concluded

after December 12, 2025, will be subject to legality review. This does not apply to collective bargaining agreements concluded before that date, according to Aleksandra Woźniak, attorney-at-law, and Jędrzej Zieliński, attorney-at-law, from the BWW law firm.

A huge amount of work for labor courts

Our experts emphasize that the main result will be a huge amount of work for the courts, which will have to verify the documents submitted to them (often extensive and with numerous attachments) from cover to cover, as the legislative change obliges them to examine the comprehensive compliance of collective bargaining agreements with the law, regardless of the scope of the application.

Under the new regulations, applications may be submitted to the courts by employees, persons other than employees who perform gainful employment, pensioners, trade unions or employers covered by the provisions of the UZP, as well as labor inspectors or prosecutors.

– It is important to note that filing a motion with the labor court does not suspend the entry into force or application of the UZP. The participants in the proceedings before the labor court in non-contentious proceedings will be the applicant and the parties to the collective bargaining agreement, according to experts from the BWW law firm.

The effects of the new case law

If a violation of the law is found, the court will rule that the collective bargaining agreement is invalid in whole or in part from the date the ruling becomes final.

In such a case, the disputed terms and conditions of employment resulting from the collective bargaining agreement shall apply to employees until the expiry of the notice period for those terms and conditions by the employer, according to an analysis by A. Woźniak and J. Zieliński.

What does this mean in practice? The notice of amendment should be submitted within two months of the date on which the ruling becomes final. The ruling that the collective bargaining agreement is invalid in whole or in part therefore has effect only for the future