Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has U-turned on a proposed expansion of the State Labour Inspectorate’s enforcement powers, halting a reform that would have significantly altered the regulatory framework governing worker classification and labour inspections.

Speaking after a coalition meeting in Paris on Tuesday, Tusk said the draft law risked conferring “excessive authority” on labour inspectors and could lead to lost jobs. 

“Allowing officials to decide how and on what basis people are employed would be highly destructive,” Tusk said, adding that “the risks outweighed the potential benefits” and that his government would not proceed with the bill in its current form.

The proposal, promoted by the Left (Lewica), a junior coalition partner, would have authorised inspectors to reclassify civil law contracts and business-to-business (B2B) arrangements as employment contracts where workers were deemed to be misclassified. 

Inspectors would have been empowered to impose such reclassification unilaterally, with non-compliant employers subject to judicial proceedings. 

Beyond worker classification, the draft legislation envisaged a broader overhaul of labour inspection mechanisms, including enhanced inter-agency data sharing, updated inspection procedures, and increased administrative and financial penalties for breaches of labour law. 

Supporters of the legislation argued that it is necessary to address widespread avoidance of social security contributions and statutory employment protections associated with non-standard forms of engagement, commonly referred to in Poland as “junk contracts”.

Despite having passed the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers and being incorporated into reform milestones linked to EU recovery funding, the proposal encountered strong opposition from employer organisations and divisions within the governing coalition. 

Labour Minister Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, who was involved in developing the reform package, said the government would continue to explore alternative regulatory tools to curb the use of precarious employment arrangements. 

She also characterised the prevalence of non-standard contracts as a structural problem within the Polish labour market, particularly affecting younger workers, gig-economy participants, and pregnant employees, who may be dismissed with limited notice or protection under civil contracts.

“The goal remains the same: to ensure real protection for employees and to prevent systemic abuse of civil law contracts,” she said.

Poland has one of the highest rates of non-standard employment in the EU. Estimates suggest that between 20% and 25% of the workforce is engaged under civil or B2B contracts, rising to around 40% among under-30s, notably in the services, retail, and logistics sectors.

Trade unions had welcomed the draft bill as a long-overdue response to what they describe as systemic misuse of flexible contracting models. Business groups, by contrast, maintain that contractual flexibility is essential for competitiveness, cost management, and job creation.