Thousands of Poles rush to obtain mandatory ZUS work seniority certificates under new 2026 labor regulations, risking the loss of previously excluded employment periods. <\/p>\n
A certificate from ZUS regarding work seniority is a document thanks to which thousands of Poles can gain additional years of work seniority in 2026. This is the result of important changes in the Labor Code that will allow previously omitted employment periods, including contracting and business activity, to be added. However, for this to happen, an application for a certificate must be submitted to ZUS. Without this document, additional months or even years of work will simply be lost.<\/p>\n
Changes regarding the calculation of work seniority entered the public sector on January 1, 2026, and since May 1, 2026, they also apply to employees of private companies. The new regulations expand the list of periods that can be added to work seniority within the meaning of the Labor Code.<\/p>\n
Until now, many people worked for years on contracts of mandate or ran a business, but these periods did not grant any employee rights related to seniority. Now this is changing. Among other things, periods that can be counted toward work seniority include:<\/p>\n
The most important thing is that the regulations also allow the inclusion of earlier periods, prior to the entry into force of the act. Therefore, it is not only about contracts concluded in 2026. This is precisely why many people are starting to take an interest in obtaining documents from ZUS and checking how many additional years of work they can recover according to the new rules.<\/p>\n
Many people mistakenly assume that the new regulations will increase retirement seniority or affect the amount of their future pension. However, ZUS explicitly emphasizes that this is not the case.<\/p>\n
The changes apply exclusively to work seniority calculated according to the Labor Code, which is the seniority that affects employee rights. They do not change the rules for granting pensions or the method of calculating benefits.<\/p>\n
Work seniority under the Labor Code determines, among other things:<\/p>\n
The most widely discussed topic is leave. This is because after exceeding 10 years of work seniority, an employee is entitled to 26 days of annual leave instead of 20 days. For some people, adding past contract work or business activity may mean exceeding this threshold, resulting in up to 6 additional days off per year.<\/p>\n
The changes may particularly benefit individuals who worked outside of traditional employment contracts for years and only later transitioned to an employment contract.<\/p>\n
For an employer to recognize additional periods toward work seniority, an appropriate certificate from the Social Insurance Institution is required. Since the beginning of 2026, a special form named “Application for a certificate of insurance for the purpose of including periods in work seniority” \u2013 USP \u2013 has been operational on the ZUS platform.<\/p>\n
The application can be submitted exclusively electronically via a eZUS account. Once the document is issued, the information will appear on the user’s account. Individuals with active notifications may receive an SMS, an e-mail, or a notification in the mZUS application.<\/p>\n
The certificate received from ZUS must be submitted to the current employer. If ZUS is unable to issue such a certificate because, for example, the worked period was a long time ago, it is possible to prove the seniority with one’s own documents. They must be submitted to ZUS.<\/p>\n
The certificate must be delivered to the employer within 24 months, counting from:<\/p>\n
If the employee fails to prove a given work period within these deadlines, the employer will not include it in the employment period on which employee rights depend.<\/p>\n
Although the new regulations are intended to expand work seniority to include business activity and contracts of mandate, doubts arise regarding professional soldiers. A portion of the military community is sounding the alarm that the new rules for calculating work seniority may not cover individuals performing service on the basis of separate regulations. Official government materials list some uniformed services, including the Police, the State Protection Service, the Border Guard, the State Fire Service, and the National Tax Administration, but there is a lack of clear confirmation that the new rules will also cover years of service in the military. This means that individuals entering service after years of running a company or working on a contract may not receive the same rights as employees covered by the Labor Code.<\/p>\n
The government project indeed primarily concerns changes to the Labor Code and the “employment period,” while professional soldiers operate on the basis of separate programmatic regulations of the Ministry of National Defense (the Homeland Defense Act of 2022). This may create a loophole.<\/p>\n
A specific-task contract is a specific type of contract whose effect is a concrete, predetermined result. It does not involve repetitive activities and assumes a lack of subordination, which is why it will not be counted toward work seniority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thousands of Poles rush to obtain mandatory ZUS work seniority certificates under new 2026 labor regulations, risking the loss of previously excluded employment periods. Work Seniority \u2013 New Rules From 2026 A certificate from ZUS regarding work seniority is a document thanks to which thousands of Poles can gain additional years of work seniority in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}