29 July
2008
The European Commission (EC) has approved new rules
harmonizing aid to businesses that employ disabled
workers.
New regulations for compensating businesses for the
additional costs of employing disabled workers will soon
enter into force after the EC passed a package of
tax-exemption harmonization regulations. When Polish law
is amended to reflect the new rules, the state will be
allowed to refund up to 75 percent of the increased costs
of hiring and insuring a disabled person.
The new rules will harmonize the amount of financial
aid available for employing disabled people across the
EU. It also gives automatic approval for a range of
public aid measures, allowing EU member states to grant
such aid without first notifying the Commission. The EC
directive will enter into force at the end of August.
But in Poland, the new regulations may offer lower aid
to employers of the disabled than those available under
current Polish law, Monika Tykarska, the vice president
of the Polish Organization of Disabled People's Employers
(POPON) told WBJ.
Today a Polish employer can count on relief ranging
from 45 to 130 percent of z?.936 - the monthly minimum
wage in December last year - depending on the type of
workplace and the employee's disability. The costs of
employing disabled people are covered by the State Fund
for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled (PFRON).
"The EU law does not always fit the local
circumstances well," Tykarska said. Polish law requires
all companies with more than 25 employees to hire
disabled people. But out of over 2.5 million disabled
people of working age in Poland, only 20 percent of them
are employed, according to PFRON data.
Frequent changes in the labor law and the potential
for various interpretations of the same regulation are
the major factors discouraging employers from hiring the
disabled, Tykarska said.
Source
Warsaw
Business Journal
