New provisions of the law on drivers' working time

On May 29, 2022, new provisions of the Law on Working Time of Drivers came into force – the Law of January 26, 2022 on Amendments to the Law on Road Transport, the Law on Working Time of Drivers and Certain Other Laws (Journal of Laws of 2022, item 209).

Employers’ obligations to keep records of drivers’ working time will change. The new regulations also apply to records kept for contractors and the self-employed.

Article 25 of the Law on Working Time of Drivers, as amended, does not provide for the possibility of continuing to record the working time of drivers on the basis of discs, printouts from the driver’s card and digital tachograph, data downloaded from the digital tachograph and driver’s card, and other documents confirming working time and the type of activity performed. In practice, this means that as of May 29 this year, an individual time record card will have to be kept for each driver employed under an employment relationship, just as for employees subject to the general standards of the Labor Code. Data from source documents will have to be converted to such records.

Time records will vary in the degree of detail depending on whether the driver is employed on a task basis, receives a lump sum for overtime or night work. For contracted drivers, the records will be the most detailed.

As of May 29, 2022, it will have to include information on:

• the number of hours worked,
  
• the start and end time of work,
  
• the number of hours worked at night,
  
• the number of overtime hours,
  
• days off with an indication of the title of their granting,
  
• the number of hours of on-call duty, the start and end time of on-call
• duty, with an indication of whether it is a duty performed at home,
  
• the type and dimension of exemptions from work,
  
• the type and dimension of other excused absences from work,
  and the dimension of unexcused absences.