Europe: Polish minimum wage to go up by 9.1% in a year

The Polish minimum wage will increase by 7.5% in January 2025 from the current 4,300 zł (£859) a month to 4,626 zł (£923) if, as expected, the Polish government implements the legislation it drafted last month.

However, the national minimum wage in Poland has already gone up once this year – on 1 July – and compared with the figure at the start of the year, 4,242 zł (£847), the annual rate of increase will be 9.1%. This is more than double the country’s current level of inflation of 4.2% in July.

The decision on the minimum wage is now in the hands of the government, as the official tripartite body, bringing together representatives of trade unions, employers and the government, failed to reach agreement on a figure by the statutory deadline of 15 July.

The employers called for the am­-ount to be frozen, and, while one union confederation, OPZZ, stated that its position “differed only slightly” from that of the government, the other, Solidarność, called the government’s proposal “unsatisfactory”.