According to the judgment of the Supreme Court of 6 December 2023 (II PSKP 31/22), the employee’s claims under Article 67, second sentence, of the Labor Code in connection with Article 56 § 1 of the Labor Code may be determined by the application of unequal treatment and discrimination to the employee (Article 112 of the Labor Code and Article 113 of the Labor Code). This means that the discriminatory or „unequal” failure to offer the employee further employment opens up the employee’s right to pursue claims under Article 56 § 1 of the Labor Code.
M.S. and M.K., former civil servants, filed a claim for compensation after their employment relationship expired as a result of changes in the National Revenue Administration. The plaintiffs claimed that the failure to provide them with new terms of employment violated the principle of equal treatment, citing an agreement between the Head of the KAS and the trade union. The case went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court indicated that, in the matter of the overlap of the employer’s liability for damages for a breach of the principle of equal treatment in employment and for defective termination of the employment relationship, the Supreme Court in its judgment of 14 April 2021, II PSKP 17/21, recalled that the employer’s liability regulated by Article 45 et seq. of the Labour Code (in relation to termination of the employment contract) and Article 56 et seq. of the Labour Code (in relation to termination of the employment contract without notice) is a contractual liability. In order to assess the employer’s conduct in terms of violating the prohibition of equal treatment in employment, it is important whether the employer took actions leading to the termination of the employment relationship because the employee had the characteristics or properties listed, for example, in Article 183a § 1 of the Labour Code, i.e. for reasons deemed discriminatory and therefore prohibited (Article 183b § 1 item 1 of the Labour Code). Therefore, while in the case of a defective termination of an employment contract due to its unjustification or the employer’s breach of the provisions on the termination or termination of contracts for reasons that do not constitute prohibited criteria, the basis for the employee’s claims are exclusively the provisions regulating the scope of their rights in this respect, a simultaneous breach by the employer of the prohibition of discrimination, leading to the termination of the employment relationship due to the use of a reason prohibited by law, gives rise to a separate claim for compensation on the part of the employee specified in Article 183d of the Labour Code. The function of this benefit is, among other things, to compensate for the property damage and personal injury of the employee against whom the employer has discriminated, which also allows for full compensation for the damage caused by the termination of the employment relationship as a consequence of a violation of the principle of equal treatment in employment (Article 183b § 1 item 1 of the Labour Code).
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