The social insurance institution does not recognize the right to receive mineral pensions of some employees of mining companies – said the president of ZE PAK, Piotr Wozny, at the meeting of the subcommittee on fair change on Tuesday. The representatives of ZUS and the Ministry of Labor noted that the definition of “mining work” is a problem.
According to the president of the ZE PAK company Petr Vozni, this problem has already affected more than 400 workers of the “Konin” mine and related companies. That’s about a quarter of Konin’s workers who are eligible to take advantage of the protection act passed in 2023, which guarantees workers in the lignite mining industry, guaranteed mining leave. The condition for receiving them is that ZUS is assigned a miners’ pension.
Miners cannot take a mining vacation. David Lach/JSW
The protection act, passed in 2023, covers about 23,000 people. workers of all Poland, but miners and energy workers of ZE PAK group will be the first to benefit from it. The company is in the process of decommissioning further lignite deposits. Now only the last mine “Tomyslavice” has been put into operation. The president of ZE PAK, Piotr Wozny, announced its closure in the middle of 2026 at least.
Denial of miners’ right to pension. Four groups
As stated by Vozny, ZUS refused to give the right to miners’ pensions to four groups of employees who work in ZE PAK: those who work in the repair of main machines, in the management and control of mines, reclamation and reclamation workers, and railway workers. refuses. .
PAK Kopalnia Węgla Brunatnego KoninTomasz Wojtasik/PAP
– All these people either worked in the field of energy or the mining industry. They did not differentiate their situation depending on which part of technological processes they work in energy or coal industry. They were just mine workers or power plant workers. Vozni said that their colleagues, who worked in the same positions and were engaged in their own work, have the right to receive the miners’ pension.
In his opinion, the situation changed in the period of 2016 and 2017, when ZUS refused to grant rights to certain groups of employees. Vozni mentioned that in 2022, the Law was amended, in which the concept of “open mine” as a place of work was replaced by “mining plant”. In his opinion, this change helped, but did not solve all the problems.
“These were not the intentions of the changes to the law in 2022”
The Deputy Minister of Family, Labor and Social Policy Sebastian Gajewski confirmed that the problem concerns the interpretation of the definition of “mining work” by ZUS, but also by the courts.
– This mining work, which includes, for example, the transfer of mining costs, should be functionally evaluated depending on what it is related to. If in such work (…) the functional connection is primarily not with coal mining, but with the sale of this coal, then according to ZUS, according to the Poznań Court of Appeal, this is no longer mining work – he said. . But Gaevsky added that this was not the purpose of the amendment of the Law in 2022, which was to extend the right to additional groups of employees.
Eva Bednarczyk, coordinator of the ZUS Department of Pensions and Disability Benefits, noted that the company bases its decisions on job descriptions received from employers and court decisions. As he noted, after the 2022 amendment, the decisions of the Supreme Court in this type of cases have not changed significantly. Bednarczyk assessed that the changes that were introduced at that time “did not eliminate all the doubts that ZUS had and still have, and the courts did not decide what types of work constitute mining work.”
Three options to solve the problem
President of PGE GEiK Jacek Kaczorowski announced that the 2023 protection act will cover 2,000 people. they work in “Belochatov” and “Turov” mines. He added that the solution is to list the mining positions covered by the permits, so that the courts and ZUS do not doubt which of them are related to the actual mining operation. – All tasks that operate in the activity of the mining enterprise should be covered by the privileges of this Law (…). We should address the tasks whose description exists directly in the history of mining enterprises, he said.
Gaevsky proposed three options for solving the problem: a dialogue with ZUS to take into account the applications of all employees of mining enterprises, changes in the rules that include the list of mining positions, or changes at the level of the Law. He promised that he will work together with the Ministry of Industry to meet the demands of the industry.
Call for quick changes to the law
Tomas Novak, the deputy chairman of the committee, stated that he is ready to prepare a draft parliamentary amendment to this document, if the positions at the regulatory level are not listed. He called for an immediate change in the law as the process of change in the ZE PAK group has begun.
– This can disrupt the entire transformation process. This can cause people to feel that there is no change with that quality, he said.
The 2023 act provides paid leave for employees with less than four years until retirement age and annual severance pay that can replace unemployment benefits under collective bargaining agreements. More than 1.7 thousand people can benefit from ZE PAK. workers This program will spend about PLN 280 million from the state budget.
Main photo source: Tomas Wojtasik / PAP
