This article examines the popularization of remote work in Poland between 2020 and 2024, drawing on data from Statistics Poland (GUS). The observed trends are interpreted within the framework of reflexive modernization. The analysis shows that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly accelerated the flexibilization of the labour market, leading to a sustained increase in remote work, especially in knowledge-based sectors and the most modernized regions of the country. The article focuses on the scale and dynamics of remote work, exploring its demographic, spatial, and sectoral variations, as well as the associated inequalities. It is based on a comprehensive analysis of the GUS data on remote work and contributes to the existing Polish literature by offering an integrated study of this phenomenon.

Collective disputes are dynamic processes in which the bargaining power of the parties to the conflict—employers and trade unions—shifts continuously over time. This analysis starts from the assumption that Polish trade unions have structurally limited institutional bargaining power, resulting from the current legal regulations governing collective bargaining procedures and the right to strike. This article conceptualises bargaining power as a short-term variable, susceptible to fluctuations even at individual stages of the conflict. The analysis is based on qualitative research involving interviews with trade union leaders who headed collective disputes between 2019 and 2022. The findings indicate that employers systematically use, among other instruments, legal procedures, repression of union activists, and the juridification of conflict to curtail employees’ bargaining power. In response, trade unions resort to compensatory strategies such as employee mobilisation, externalisation of the conflict, building social coalitions, and using informal forms of pressure. The results show that the course of a collective dispute should be analysed as a relational sequence of mutual interactions, in which losses in one area of bargaining power can be partially offset by activating other sources of bargaining power. Understanding this dynamic is key to analysing contemporary labour conflicts and the functioning of collective industrial relations in Poland.

In this article, we will undertake an analysis explaining several significant moments of contemporary struggles to preserve the system of social rights built in the 19th century and established in 1945, guaranteeing French workers favourable working conditions, health insurance, social security in the event of job loss and retirement, which are gradually subject to neoliberal reforms. The subject of our analysis here are three important moments in the struggle to preserve acquis sociaux, i.e.,
the social rights won, allowing us to understand the social meaning of the changes that have taken place in this matter since the early 1990s in France. The first of these moments is the largest labour strike since 1968, which took place in 1995 and was aimed both at defending the public sector, in particular the state railways (SNCF and RATP), against their privatisation, and at preserving the social rights existing in France at that time, including the pension law in force at that time. The second moment we will devote attention to here will be the “Yellow jackets” revolt, which took place in 2018—2019, and whose participants demanded the revocation of pro-ecological rights. The third moment is the fight against the pension system reform finally introduced “by force” in 2023.

This article addresses the issues of stigmatization and discrimination against individuals with excess body weight in the Polish labor market. Its primary aim is to analyze how overweight and obese individuals are perceived in the workplace by HR professionals and managers. A key focus is placed on identifying who is currently recognized as a person with excess body weight in professional contexts, what stereotypes are associated with overweight and obesity, and whether and how individuals with additional weight may face discrimination from HR staff, managerial personnel, and colleagues. The presented conclusions are based on the qualitative research conducted by the author among HR specialists and managers.

Maritime professions have been a central focus of Polish maritime sociology for decades. Researchers studying work at sea have been based not only in Gdańsk and Szczecin but also in Poznań or Katowice. The article presents several decades of research achievements in this field, with special emphasis on the specifics of employment on deep-sea vessels. This work environment has at times been perceived as a closed, quasi-total institution. The article also discusses contemporary research trends, including safety culture, equality, and automation, as well as the challenges maritime labour organizers face in light of the blue economy concept.

This article addresses the problem of social exclusion and the struggle for recognition experienced by individuals affected by mechanisms of marginalization within the Roman Catholic Church. The subject of the study is the religious event “Pilgrimage from the Margins of the Church,” which took place on 4 October 2025 in Częstochowa at Jasna Góra. The analysis is grounded in Axel Honneth’s theory of the struggle for recognition. The study employs participant observation and content analysis. The aim of the article is to examine acts of recognition performed during the event as well as the accompanying media discourse. The pilgrimage constitutes a manifestation of the identity of individuals who have been excluded and harmed within the Roman Catholic Church, while the symbolic acts of recognition represent an attempt at social rehabilitation.