Tom 33 (2015): Zeszyt 1 (December 2015)
PRIVILEGES

The subject of this article is a part of a broader debate related to the participation of the private sector in the execution of public services. It concerns those services which are provided to recipients in the conditions of a natural monopoly, based on a license (so with the privilege of exclusivity) awarded to private companies for executing the state’s tasks. This paper aims at outlining the reasons behind the implementation of similar solutions and the problems related to entrusting the private party with satisfying public needs – problems which revealed a conflict of interest between the parties of the licensing contract.

The Second Polish Republic developed an advanced and, in many ways, modern system of social care; however, the services which the citizens were entitled to seemed to be privileges available only to a small part of the population. The origins of this situation are to be found in the specific social and occupational structure of the population, low industrialization rate and the modest financial capabilities of the state and local governments. These resulted in a limited number of people with access to social insurances, a limited scope of public health care, a selective nature of access to unemployment insurance or radical differences in access to social care. And it is this unavailability of the social offer which determines the consideration of those benefits in Poland as privileges rather than commonly available rights of the Polish citizens.

Social insurance was conceived from a great thought of the social caution, from the thought of protection of an uncertain future. That thought of caution, during the time of development of social insurance, was implemented by the public entities on the one hand and by the civil activity on the other one. However, the process of creation of the social insurance system in Poland did not represent the policy of caution executed by the state. The only sign of caution could be seen with reference to the insurance associations as there the participants decided whether to enter the system or not whereas the state executed the policy of giving privileges to the certain social groups

During the times of the Second Polish Republic the civil servants, teachers, the military, postal and railway workers were not covered by the universal social insurance, because before the social insurance act came into force, they were covered by pension systems guaranteeing more advantageous benefits. Persons working in state administration had a privileged position compared to the employees in general, both in terms of the scope and level of the benefits and their entire coverage by the State. The level of the pensions depended on the years of service and after 10 years of service amounted to 40% and was increasing every year by 2.4% or 3% up to 100%. The civil servants acquired the right to the pension already after 10 years and as of 1934 after 15 years of civil or military service. In special cases they were entitled to pension after 5 years already.

Despite the elaborated techniques of electronic surveillance, personal sources of information still remain the best possible method of infiltrating a criminal milieu. Such methods gain special importance in totalitarian states. Collaborating with the Security Service almost always had some notable benefits. For some of the TWs, collaborating was an additional, sometimes quite substantial, source of income. One of repeating motives for collaboration was a will to improve one’s professional position or to easily obtain a permission to go abroad. There were also persons, who were impressed with having contacts with the Security Service functionaries. Almost all collaborators were using different forms of help from the part of the Security Service. Most of them would obtain real financial and material profits. The spectrum of favours offered to those helping the repressive state apparatus was very extensive.

Described privileges of determined employee groups in the Polish tobacco industry in a period of Polish People’s Republic on example of Kraków plants arose largely from the statute law, although not without meaning carried out its interpretation, by workers self-management and Company’s Dispute Adjudication Boards (CDAB). It was possible to notice the sign of appropriating privileges by determined employees groups not-arising from the existing law, but being a sign of aspirations to ensure a higher position for oneself in the unit through certain acquaintances and in consequence achieving common benefits, etc. informally. The article constitutes only a starting point for further in-depth studies covering employee issues in all tobacco industry in Poland.

The article aims at analyzing a particular occupational privilege of employees, commonly referred to as a benefits package. This social privilege is considered a real social and legal phenomenon by a large number of academics. This is because no legal regulations on the privatization and commercialization of Polish companies actually imposed it. The origin of this specific privilege lies in the pragmatic attitude of employees to the process of privatization of companies and selling their stocks to strategic investors. This type of agreements was supposed to protect staff from radical restructuring which the investor could implement upon buying the company. Owing to this privilege, employees were able to establish their own space of social security in the factory. The article presents examples of such documents, discusses their content and possible sanctions for the new owner of the factory (the signatory of the document) if the provisions of the document are not complied with.

The article discusses the subject of celebrating International Women’s Day in the Polish People’s Republic (1952-1989). The author aims at showing the importance of this day in the public space – specifically in state enterprises. The article mainly attempts to assess whether those celebrations were inspired by the communist authorities and used to achieve some short- and long-term social goals, or if they allowed to establish or re-establish some kind of trust for the party in power. Empirical data are used to illustrate the phenomenon.

The author points out that in the period of the Polish People’s Republic, there existed a certain privilege of being a women. This was evidenced by the prestige that the authorities of the time assigned to the celebration of Women’s Day and the fact that Men’s Day was not celebrated, or at least was much more marginal.