Committee proposes improvements in holiday entitlement for casual workers

A committee considering reforms in Finnish legislation on annual holidays has proposed that all employees should be entitled to a paid holiday, and that the holiday pay of part-time workers should be increased. Under Finland's current Annual Holidays Act, dating from 1973, employees have no paid holiday entitlement unless they work for at least 35 hours in a month.

The proposed amendment allows for the requirements of European Union Directives on working time and atypical employment. The European Working Time Directive provides that all employees must be entitled to four weeks of paid holiday annually. The committee recommends that this Directive should be implemented by ensuring that employees working for less than 35 hours a month also have the right to paid holiday time off.

Efforts to reform Finland's Annual Holidays Act have previously been made on two occasions - in 1990 and 1994. The work has also proved difficult this time round. The committee, which also included representatives of labour market organisations, was unable to submit a unanimous proposal.

The employee organisations have considered reform of the Annual Holidays Act to be essential in order to place various types of working arrangements on an equitable footing in respect of annual holiday entitlement. The reform also means that the holiday entitlement regulations for part-time employees that are currently included in collective agreements for certain industries will now be transferred to the Annual Holidays Act. This will improve the situation of part-time hourly-paid employees in particular. About 250,000 employees work under atypical employment arrangements in Finland.

The committee studied the feasibility of introducing a uniform system of leave-earning and holiday pay, irrespective of whether the employee receives a monthly salary or hourly pay. However, it was unable to reach a consensus on a common earnings system for all workers. Opinions were also divided on whether the system could be reformed without reducing individual holiday entitlements. The legislative proposal submitted by the committee preserves the leave-earning differential between salaried and hourly-paid employees. Hourly-paid employees in Finland enjoy slightly greater holiday entitlement than employees who receive a monthly salary.

The one-week winter holiday taken between October and March will continue as a mandatory provision.

The report of the committee includes a proposal that would give the employee the option of receiving financial compensation instead of this fifth week of holiday taken during the winter. The Confederation of Finnish Trade Unions - SAK views this point of the report as particularly problematic. SAK fears that the right to financial compensation for the additional holiday week could be abused at the workplace so that it fails to serve the interests of the employee. In its review of the committee report the Board of SAK concludes that the fifth holiday week should be carried over into the new Annual Holidays Act in its present form as mandatory legislation.

See also the press release of the Ministry of Labour.