You don't need any specific documents to be able to work if you arrived to Poland after 24th of February, 2022. All the necessary formalities will be handled by your employer. Official information on employment is here .

Poland is planning to amend the Special Law on assistance to citizens of Ukraine. According to the new rules, from 2023, all refugees must apply for a PESEL number.

Ukrainians who moved to Poland after February 24, 2022, and lost their educational document can obtain a European Qualification Passport (EQPR). The EQPR is a tool that facilitates the recognition of refugees' qualifications even in the absence of complete documentation. It also records the refugee's highest level of education, experience and language skills.

In addition, this document can be used by refugees who seek employment. The document was created to replace the lost documents confirming the following: 1. higher education; 2. vocational education; 3. complete secondary education; 4. training practice;

To apply for this document, you need to follow a few steps.

1. create an account on this website ;
2. fill in the profile questionnaire for the EQPR;
3. apply for the document.

For more information on how to register for the European Qualification Passport, please refer to the special booklet on the document (available in Ukrainian).

If you have any additional questions, you can get a consultation in Ukrainian by calling 451 058 653.

Consultations on employment issues

You can get advice on employment issues at the following contacts:

Mon-Fri, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., phone 22 111 35 88 — for foreigners working in the following voivodships: Mazowieckie, Łódź, Wielkopolska, Świętokrzyskie, Lublin, and Lubuskie.

Mon-Fri, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., phone 89 333 17 41 — for foreigners who work in the Voivodeships: Warmian-Masurian, Pidlaskie, Kuyavian-Pomeranian, Pomeranian, and Western Pomeranian Voivodeships.

Mon-Wed, from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., phone number 22 111 35 29 — for foreigners working in the following voivodships: Podkarpatska, Lesser Poland, Silesia, Opole, and Lower Silesia.

Portal with vacancies for Ukrainians from the Polish government

The Polish government has launched a free state portal with vacancies for Ukrainians — PracawPolsce.gov.pl .

To use the portal, you need to create an account by filling out a special form. If you have questions about filling out the form, you can contact the hotline at +48 22 19 524 from Monday to Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Consultants who speak Polish, Ukrainian and English will help you.

After filling out the form, you will receive emails with job offers. Now on the portal you can find more than 250 thousand verified job offers.

You can contact the employment office which is near you, where an advisor will conduct an interview and try to determine your qualifications and will look for vacancies that match your experience.
You can also call the helpline of employment offices - Green Line - where you will get support on possible employment options. You can contact them from Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. by calling 19524, writing to the chat or sending an e-mail to ukraina@zielonalinia.gov.pl. More details here .

You can register with the employment office as unemployed here and use all forms of support offered by the office, such as doing an internship, training, obtaining funds for opening a business.

Poland has launched a state-owned website with vacancies for the citizens of Ukraine. The portal will help you to find a job in your field, but for a comfortable posting, it is necessary to have a PESEL number.

Information and consultation center of employment service "Green Line" or hotline: 195-24.

You don't need to go through the procedure of nostrification of the diploma. If you need information about a foreign diploma - apply to the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchanges here or you can check the information using the Kwalifikator system .

But if you still need to go through the procedure of nostrification of a diploma, you can read about it in detail here .

The social impact campaign “Know Your Rights ” launched by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) increases awareness about employees’ rights among Ukrainian refugees in Poland with the aim to sensitize them about specificity of the Polish labour market, build their confidence during the job search and boost employability.

According to the IRC’s labour market assessment conducted last year, 70% of the Ukrainian refugees interviewed identified finding a job as their most pressing need. As the war has no end in sight, people who have found safety in Poland still report that securing a sustainable source of income remains among their primary concerns today. At the same time, often unsatisfactory working conditions, which include salaries below the minimum wage, no contractual protection, unregulated work schedules, and in some cases missed payments or other forms of abuse, have been flagged as the top barriers preventing refugees from finding safe and stable employment in Poland. All these barriers are more amplified by the fact that most of the refugees from Ukraine are women, which makes the process of finding decent employment more challenging.

The need to find secure employment is crucial in light of the recent changes to the refugee hosting laws , in place since March, as people fleeing Ukraine are now expected to cover part of their accommodation costs in the collective shelters. The IRC has warned that changes may impact the most vulnerable groups and result in premature returns amidst an unstable security situation, as well as force people to resort to unsafe employment, or other negative coping mechanisms, which may provide temporary means of survival but can seriously undermine people’s long- term well-being or security.

The IRC’s campaign will provide basic information on where to search for services, what types of contracts exist in Poland and what obligations an employer has to an employee and useful sources and contacts to gain additional information or legal assistance from partners we work with. We aim to reach Ukrainians in Poland but also those who are still in Ukraine but think about leaving the country, to enable them to make more informed decisions. To achieve that we engaged in cooperation with a number of Ukrainian opinion leaders to highlight both the details of the regulations, and stories of people who already operate within the existing legal frameworks.

More details on the website .

If your labor rights are violated, you should contact the appropriate authorities depending on the form of the contract concluded with the employer.

The concluded employment contract (Umowa o pracze).

This type of contract is regulated by the Labor Code of the Republic of Poland. This is the best form of contract for the employee, which guarantees social protection and also provides an opportunity to compensate the debt owed by an unscrupulous employer. After concluding an employment contract, in case of non-payment of wages (or late payment), you can file a complaint against the employer with the State Labor Inspection (Panstwowa Inspekcja Pracy - PIP). Link .

Other types of civil law contracts (umowa o zlecenie, umowa o dzielo) have been concluded.

Such types of labor relations are regulated by the Civil Code of the Republic of Poland, and accordingly, for the resolution of disputes regarding the violation of labor rights, including non-payment of wages, it is possible to apply not only to the State Labor Inspectorate (SIP), but also to national courts - the Labor Court (Sąd Pracy - district or district). To successfully resolve the case, it is better to contact a lawyer who will analyze the documents and help win the case.

Absence of any employment contract.

In this case, there is practically no chance of receiving unpaid wages. However, you can still contact the State Labor Inspectorate, which can impose a fine on the employer for illegal employment.

It should be remembered that working without any employment contracts and, accordingly, non-payment of insurance contributions to ZUS also leads to the absence of medical insurance in Poland, and in case of health problems, you will have to pay for treatment yourself.

In order to avoid situations with non-payment of wages by the employer, we advise you to:

• check whether the employer company is registered, whether there are fines, or whether it has not been liquidated.
• conclude a written contract with the employer (best Umowu o practu).

Source .