Self-employment and the legal model of protection in Poland

Abstract

The growing popularity of self-employment, in which self-employed persons very often operate in conditions similar to those of employees, has necessitated the need to extend this category of workers to protection, which until recently was reserved exclusively for the employment relationship. De lege lata under Polish law, the self-employed already benefit from: legal protection in the field of life and health; protection against discrimination; a guaranteed minimum wage and protection of wages for work; the protection of parenthood; and also from coalition rights, which consequently gives them broad collective rights. The tendency to extend legal protection to selfemployed persons is consistent with both the standards of international and EU law, as well as the norms of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. The aim of this study is to answer the question whether the legal protection of the self-employed should be extended at all, and if so, what should be the statutory model of this protection and the criteria for determining its limits in Poland to ensure its effective functioning in practice.