17. Employee benefits

In June 2020, Orange Polska signed with Trade Unions amendments to the Collective Labour Agreement. Under the current provisions of the Collective Labour Agreement, employees are entitled to jubilee awards upon completion of a certain number of years of service. According to the agreed changes, these current rules regarding jubilee awards will be cancelled from April 2021. At the same time, in the period between April and December 2021, employees with 15-30 years of service will receive a one-off jubilee award at the specified amount depending on a number of years of service. As a result, negative past service cost of PLN 64 million was recognised as a decrease in labour expense in the 12 months ended 31 December 2020 with a corresponding decrease in liabilities relating to employee benefits.

On 12 December 2019, OPL S.A. concluded with Trade Unions the Social Agreement for years 2020 – 2021 (see Note 15) in which the Company, as a part of the negotiated employment optimisation programme, committed to make additional contributions in the fixed amount totalling PLN 19 million to the employee social programmes carried out by the Company. As a result, this amount was recognised as other employee-related payables as at 31 December 2019 and labour expense in the 12 months ended 31 December 2019. As at 31 December 2020, the liability amounted to PLN 7 million.