Poland considers to ‘limit’ shopping

Bloomberg

Poland’s largest trade union submitted a draft bill to parliament restrict retail trade on Sundays, rejecting warnings from employers’ groups that such regulation would eliminate a quarter of the 400,000 jobs at shopping centers across the country.
The Solidarnosc union collected more than half a million signatures, or five times more than required to submit a bill to parliament, for a draft law that would force shopping centers and supermarkets to shut on Sundays, while allowing retail stores at gas stations, train and bus stops, airports, hospitals and schools to remain open.
Parliamentary work on the legislation will probably begin next month, according to the union, which backed the winning campaign of the Law & Justice party in last year’s parliamentary election. Poland’s unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest since the introduction of free-market reforms in 1990, fueled by 3 percent economic growth and rising wages. That makes it the best time to introduce a limit on shopping hours, the trade union said.
“Poland’s jobs market is in a really great shape,” Marek Lewandowski, a spokesman for Solidarnosc, said by phone. “One shouldn’t believe in those alarming voices saying this will lead to job cuts and losses. They have been proved completely false.”