How to Calculate Your Pay and Task-Based Bonus at Zakłady Ceramiczne „Bolesławiec”

Until October 2025, the work performed by most ZCB employees was referred to as piece-rate work. In the case of a painter at ZCB, this meant the number of dishes painted during the working day.

Since November 2025, there has officially been no piece-rate work at ZCB. Instead, there is a basic time-based salary equal to the minimum wage (PLN 4,806 gross) and a task-based bonus. The ZCB management (Arkadiusz Grzesikowski and Wojciech Huczyński) introduced these changes through so-called modifying notices.

This resulted from the termination of the collective bargaining agreement (by former president Sebastian Fijałkowski) and its not being replaced with a new agreement or remuneration regulations. All employees who remained with the company signed new modifying agreements. Employees received notices terminating their old pay conditions and were presented with new remuneration rules in the form of individual agreements.

New agreements: some employees earn as much as PLN 2,000 less

After signing the modifying agreement, previously guaranteed items disappeared from employees’ pay slips, including the seniority allowance (1% of the minimum wage for each year of work) and the hazardous-work allowance (10% of the minimum wage). For people with long service, this meant a real loss of as much as PLN 2,000 per month compared with the previous system.

When the remuneration changes were introduced, a ZCB employee with 36 years of service published criticism of the president’s pay policy in a Facebook comment. For the criticism, the president sued him for PLN 25,000 and dismissed him. The president later stressed that the lawsuit had never been a “tool for freezing criticism” or a “scare tactic” directed at employees. He added that, as the person serving as the company’s management board president, he was obliged to respond to actions that could infringe personal rights, particularly honour, good name and personal dignity.

Loss simulation – elimination of allowances

Assumptions: minimum wage: PLN 4,806 gross; seniority allowance: 1% for each year; hazardous-work allowance: 10%

There is no piece-rate system; there is a task-based bonus

What does eliminating piece-rate work on paper cause? Under a piece-rate system, the Labour Code regulates the minimum required provisions, giving employees a clearer pay situation.

A task-based bonus is a loophole, because the Labour Code does not regulate what tasks an employer may assign for an employee to qualify for a bonus. The employer has considerably more freedom to act here.

Under the new conditions, piece-rate workers received a guaranteed basic salary (the minimum wage of PLN 4,806 gross), while the task-based bonus replaced piece-rate pay, although remuneration is based on the same price lists. Trade unionists call this a legal trick.

How to read your pay slip now?

After these changes, to correctly read your remuneration at ZCB, you need to compare two documents:

• the pay slip
• and the work valuation (no longer called piece-rate pay)

Under the current system, the value of work performed does not appear on the pay slip as a single item. It has been divided into:

1. Basic salary (the first item on the list) – if a full month has been worked, it corresponds to the current minimum wage of PLN 4,806 gross.
2. Task-based bonus is an additional amount representing the surplus earned above the minimum wage in a system that looks like piece-rate work, although the work is no longer called that.

How to calculate the (non-)piece-rate pay, or bonus?

This is difficult because there is no clear system. Only the painting department has computers that display the painted patterns and show how much was earned for painting a particular product. In the other departments, there are only paper price lists, where (non-)piece-rate pay is calculated mostly by product weight or per 100 items (as in the forming and casting departments).

It is most difficult in the sorting department, where an employee has neither the time nor the opportunity to value the work, that is, to add up their daily (non-)piece-rate pay. For this article, let us explain with an example: a sorting department employee receives one zloty for a product weighing up to half a kilogram, while for a product weighing more than half a kilogram and up to one kilogram, the amount earned is PLN 1.10. The employee should know exactly how much the products they sort weigh, but this is difficult because there are several thousand types and it is impossible to remember them all. A female sorter processes hundreds of items a day, so she has no time to add up these small and varied amounts. Therefore, she cannot calculate for herself how much she earned in a month—whether she earned only the minimum, meaning the basic salary, or whether she will receive a “bonus”, meaning what she earned above that minimum.

The court highlighted this discrepancy in the justification of the appeal judgment in Kamila Bandrów’s pay case. We reported on the judgment in the article: A groundbreaking judgment concerning remuneration at Zakłady Ceramiczne „Bolesławiec”.

An analysis of two months of work by the same employee shows that the amount of the task-based bonus does not directly depend on the number of hours worked or the number of overtime hours. In the shorter month, with 8 overtime hours, the bonus amounted to approximately PLN 450. In the longer month, with approximately 14 overtime hours, the bonus rose to more than PLN 2,100. The difference therefore does not result from working time alone.

The information obtained indicates that the type of product being made has a decisive effect on the bonus, not merely the number of hours worked. Better, more highly valued products are assigned mainly to weekends, meaning employees working overtime at weekends may earn considerably more than those working on weekdays.

Guide – ZCB employees, calculate your pay

We attempted to analyse both documents step by step (the pay slip and the work valuation) and tried to calculate the pay of a female painter at ZCB. The guide for employees may look as follows:

Prepare a computer printout of the work valuation. Before looking at the pay slip, check the detailed statement for the entire month. On this printout, you will find:

• decoration names (they are marked with codes such as “AR”)
• the rate and number of items (for each decoration, the rate for the given element and the number of completed items are shown)
• daily value: the amount shows how much you earned on a particular day
• the final total: at the bottom of the “value” column is the total amount of (non-)piece-rate pay earned for the month

Check the items on the pay slip.

• Basic salary: this is the first item on the list. If a full month has been worked, it corresponds to the current minimum wage of PLN 4,806 gross.
• Task-based bonus: This is an additional amount representing the surplus earned through (non-)piece-rate work above the minimum wage.

Add up the components

To check whether the payment is correct, you must add the basic salary and the task-based bonus, which gives the total from the computer printout (previously, these two amounts automatically matched one item on the pay slip called “piece-rate pay”); now, only their sum produces the figure shown in the statement.

Pay attention to additional variables

• Attention! The new pay slips no longer include the former “adjustment” to the minimum wage, which the employer was obliged to pay under applicable law. At present, PLN 4,806 gross for a full month is guaranteed, even if someone did not earn it through their work. Before this change, as many as half of piece-rate employees received adjustments.
• Hours of absence: If you took holiday or were on sick leave in a given month, or took paid leave, for example to donate blood, your basic salary will be lower because part of the payment will be classified as holiday pay calculated using an average or as sick pay.
• Hourly bonus rate: You can estimate the bonus yourself by calculating how many additional zlotys you earn per hour (for example, with 160 hours worked, a bonus of PLN 3 per hour gives approximately PLN 500 in additional pay).
• Many employees also work overtime. These calculations are likewise unclear to employees. The employer has not separated the full remuneration for this time from the task-based bonus, despite the recommendations of the National Labour Inspectorate on this matter, so it may be absorbed by the minimum wage.

All this leads to one conclusion, highlighted by the appellate court’s judgment: an employee at ZCB, working an eight-hour day, cannot tell whether the employer has calculated their remuneration correctly and cannot hold the employer accountable for that calculation.