What Happens When an Employee Rejects Changed Employment Terms?
Translated from Polish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.
At a glance
Explainer
Documents & data
Outcome reported
- An employee’s refusal to accept new employment conditions does not automatically establish that the employment relationship ended for reasons attributable to the employee.
- Eligibility for severance depends mainly on the scale of the proposed change and whether the refusal was objectively justified.
- Poland’s Supreme Court addressed the issue in a ruling dated April 23, 2025.
Simply rejecting new employment conditions does not automatically mean that an employee caused the end of the employment relationship.
The key questions in assessing severance rights are how substantial the proposed change was and whether the employee had objectively justified grounds for refusing it. This is particularly important when an employer proposes a major deterioration in working conditions and later identifies the employee’s refusal as the reason the employment relationship ended.
The Polish Supreme Court expressed this position in a decision dated April 23, 2025, case number III PSK 186/24.
About this summary
Originally published by Rzeczpospolita in Polish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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