Prepared at the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy, the regulations governing the mechanism for granting an honorary benefit to centenarians will come into force on 1 January 2025. What does this mean in practice? The benefit of 6,200 gross per month will be granted ex officio and, importantly, valorised annually. The President has just signed the Act to this effect.

Czechs, Finns, Portuguese, Lithuanians and Slovaks have long been enjoying the 24th of December as the public holiday. Why Polish workers should not benefit from this day? The economies of the aforementioned countries did not collapse because the Christmas Eve is a public holiday there, and the Polish economy will not collapse either. The cost of introducing the Christmas Eve as a public holiday will be negligible. Many families will become stronger and simply happier,' said Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, the Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy, in the Sejm. The first reading of the bill establishing Christmas Eve as a public holiday was held on Friday.

The registered unemployment rate in October this year remained at 5% – according to estimates by the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy. The number of unemployed persons amounted to 767,100 and was the lowest recorded in October since the beginning of the measurement, that is, since 1990.

The Council of Ministers has adopted a bill prepared in our ministry introducing a new entitlement - additional maternity leave for parents of premature babies and parents of babies born on time but requiring prolonged hospitalisation after birth. Parents of premature babies have been waiting for this bill for several years. It is an extremely important step towards improving the situation of families facing concerns about the life and health of their newborn babies. The length of the complementary maternity leave will be up to 8 or 15 weeks, respectively.

The Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy, Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, met on Monday at the Ministry's headquarters with representatives of the European Parliament's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs.

The Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk met on Thursday with Cesare Onestini, Director-General for Agriculture, Fisheries, Social Affairs and Health (LIFE) at the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU. The talks concerned the Polish Presidency of the Council in areas concerning the competences of the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy.

The registered unemployment rate at the end of September 2024 was 5 per cent. The Central Statistical Office has thus confirmed the estimates of the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy. The number of unemployed was even lower than we had forecast, at just under 770,000.

22 October is a special date - this is when Family Rights Day falls. The family plays a key role in the activities of our ministry - from programmes that provide direct support to families with children, to reforms in the labour market area, to restoring social justice in the context of the elderly. Family is our common denominator.

Monday's meeting of the Social Dialogue Council was the last chaired by the Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk. At the end of the government side's term, a representative of the employees' side - the President of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union 'Solidarność' Piotr Duda - will take over the presidency.

‘How to rebuild and stimulate social dialogue as a modern formula for public management’ was the title of Thursday's panel organised as part of the European Forum for New Ideas, in which the Minister of Family, Labour and Social Policy Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk participated. ‘The fundamental aim of dialogue is to understand each other's attitudes, limitations and challenges, even if these positions are not always shared,’ said the head of the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy in Sopot.