According to “Rzeczpospolita”, one of the company's key problems is: rising costs of coal miningwhich are largely due to the excessively expanded wage bill. In the years 2021–2023, salary expenses at JSW increased from PLN 4.6 billion to PLN 7.4 billion, which means an increase of 60%.
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High costs
As “Rzeczpospolita” writes, despite the company's difficult financial situation, miners still benefit from numerous privileges, such as coal allowance, health and safety allowances and 10-year protection of employment contracts. The newspaper emphasizes that the agreements concluded with trade unionists in 2018, 2021 and 2023 additionally increased the financial burden of JSW.
The newspaper indicates that half of the costs of mines are employee expenses, which are in no way related to work efficiency. “The skyrocketing remuneration of JSW employees in recent years, resulting from an agreement between the company's politically appointed heads and trade unionists, turned out to be significant,” we read in the article.
Management without experience
An additional blow for JSW was – as “Rzeczpospolita” puts it – “a political experiment with disastrous consequences”. In the years 2024–2025, the company was managed by a management board chaired by Ryszard Janta, whose members, as the daily points out, “were taken from an economics university” and had no experience in mining. The decisions made by this management board were to significantly deepen the company's crisis.
Trade unions versus management
“Rzeczpospolita” obtained a document which shows that JSW's trade union organizations have strongly opposed the draft management board agreement. The document provided for the temporary suspension of selected salary benefits, which was intended to improve the company's financial condition. However, trade unions assessed that this was an attempt to shift responsibility for the crisis onto employees. “The costs of incompetence of the company's management and supervisory bodies are to be covered by the staff” – this is how the unions summed up the management's proposals.
Future prospects
As noted by “Rzeczpospolita”, JSW was on the verge of bankruptcy not only due to the situation on global markets, but also due to incorrect management decisions and political arrangements. In the face of the growing crisis, the company is facing difficult choices that may affect its further operation.
