Employment Certificate for a Temporary Worker - Who Issues It and Under What Rules?

Almost every employee probably knows what an employment certificate is - it's a document confirming the course of employment, necessary when starting a new job, establishing pension entitlements, or counting seniority with a new employer. However, in the case of temporary work, an additional question arises: who issues the employment certificate if the employee formally cooperates with an agency but actually performs tasks for a completely different company? This tripartite model raises doubts just as often among employees as among HR departments cooperating with agencies. We explain step by step the rules governing this document.

Who issues the employment certificate in temporary work?

The formal employer of a temporary worker is the temporary employment agency, not the company where the worker actually performs their duties. It is the agency that concludes the contract, pays the salary, remits ZUS (social security) contributions, and - consequently - issues the employment certificate. The user employer, meaning the company where the employee actually carries out tasks, has no obligations related to this document. Its role is limited to supervising the work performed, assigning tasks, and ensuring safe working conditions on site. This division of responsibilities follows directly from the Act on the Employment of Temporary Workers of 9 July 2003, which regulates the entire tripartite model.

How much time does the agency have to issue the employment certificate?

Here, temporary work is governed by different rules than standard employment. Under the Act on the Employment of Temporary Workers, the agency issues the employment certificate for the total completed period of employment covered by successive contracts concluded within a period not exceeding 12 consecutive months. In other words: if an employee performed temporary work under several consecutive contracts within a year, the agency does not issue a certificate after each contract, but collectively once this 12-month period has elapsed. The certificate is issued on the day this period ends. This solution is meant to relieve agencies of the obligation to issue over a dozen documents a year for a single employee who changes user employers every few weeks.

What if the contract ends earlier or later?

If the termination or expiry of a contract concluded before the 12-month period elapses falls after that period has already ended, the certificate is issued on the day that specific contract terminates. An employee may also independently apply for the issuance of an employment certificate before the 12 months elapse, if the contract has been terminated or has expired. In such a case, the agency has 7 days from the submission of the request to issue the document. If issuing it within this deadline is not possible, the agency sends or delivers the certificate within a further 7 days - meaning the employee should not have to wait longer than two weeks in total from the moment the request was submitted.

What does the employment certificate of a temporary worker contain?

The document contains the same elements as a standard employment certificate: the period and type of work performed, positions held, the mode of termination or the basis for the expiry of the employment relationship, as well as information necessary to establish employee and pension entitlements - including the annual leave used in the year in which the employment ended. The Act on Temporary Workers does not provide separate content rules for this document, so the general provisions of the Labour Code on certificates apply. For a collective certificate covering several contracts with different user employers, the number of these employers does not affect how the used leave days are shown - only the calendar year in which the employment relationship ultimately ended matters.

Work under special conditions and non-contributory periods

If a temporary employee performed work under special conditions or of a special nature, this information must also be included in the certificate - specifying the exact periods during which such work was performed. Similarly, non-contributory periods, taken into account when establishing pension rights, must be shown precisely. This is important for temporary employees who often change positions across various assignments with different user employers - without a precise certificate, it would later be difficult to reconstruct the full employment history.