New figures from the Finance Ministry show that local councils will pay out as much as PLN 50 million more on annual bonuses this year than in 2013.

Photo: flickr/cc/money pictures

In total, employees of the public administration working at the local levels will receive PLN 3.9 billion in Christmas bonuses, usually reffered to as a ‘trzynastka’ – roughly the equivalent of a ‘thirteenth’ monthly salary.

Public administration employees working for other institutions, including ministries and regional governments, are to receive a total of PLN 1.22 billion.

According to experts polled by the daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, the first quarter of 2015 will also see further records being beaten in the private sector as company bosses also pay out bonuses for 2014.

The rise in bonuses is due to two factors, including a rise in employment in local administrations as well as incremental growth of bonuses and extras for long-term employees.

Currently the public administration is obliged to pay out Christmas bonuses to anyone who worked for a minimum of six months in the given calendar year, with the ‘trzynastka’ bonus amounting to 8.5 percent of total earnings for 2014.

Pundits believe that the government should scrap the bonus scheme, with lawyer Dr Stefan Plazek from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow telling the daily that “there’s no sense in the motivational system being based on regular bonuses”. (jb)