Deputies and Senators receive mandate from voters and therefore they form a specific category of public functionaries. For that reason, the body of legal provisions contains a comprehensive catalog of supplementary rights, not applying to other citizens, which are intended to enable the Deputies and Senators to exercise freely their mandate and to secure materially the carrying out of their functions. The first group of powers include classical instruments of constitutional law such as, above all, parliamentary immunity and the principle of incompatibility. The examples of the powers of the second group are the right to a parliamentary per diem allowance (designed to cover the costs related to the exercise of the mandate), the right to a Deputy's (and Senator's) salary conferred on the so-called professional parliamentarians, as well as several provisions which regulate in a specific way some aspects of labour relationship between the Deputy and the employer. The latter concerns those MPs who at the same time exercise their mandate as representative and remain in a labour relationship outside Parliament. The provisions of Polish law obliges the employer to release a Deputy, who has not utilized his right to unpaid leave at his employer, from an obligation to perform work to enable him to carry out his parliamentary duties, but also impose on the employer an obligation to grant an unpaid leave to an MP who has applied for it, and also guarantee that after the conclusion of unpaid leave a Deputy will be employed on the same or equivalent position and, finally, protect him against termination of labour relationship by the employer or any change in his working conditions or wages even after the expiry of the mandate. Accepting the necessity of existence of certain mechanisms to protect the Deputies and Senators in the Republic of Poland, one cannot avoid the reflection that some existing legal regulations are deeply rooted in the former political and economic system. An example of such a norm is given by Article 31(2) of the Act of 1996 on the Exercise of the Mandate of a Deputy or Senator, originating in 1985, and which was a used by the State to guarantee employment to former Deputies to the Sejm of Polish People's Republic. In view of great economic transitions, making the termination of labour relationship with a former Deputy dependent on the consent of the Chamber actually violates the freedom of the parties to shape the labour relationship, and also prevents or, at least, considerably obstructs pursuing his own employment policy by the employer and also enjoy the rights provided for in the Labour Code (e.g. those connected with termination, without notice, of a labour relationship for reasons attribuatable to the employee).
