New protection for redundant and casual workers in Finland

The redundancy security package that formed part of the comprehensive incomes policy settlement reached in Finland last December is due to take effect in July of this year. This legislative reform has been prepared with unprecedented speed. The package involves amendments to the Employment Contracts Act and the Act on Co-operation within Undertakings. Provisions on unemployment benefit and manpower services will also be changed.

"The redundancy security package requires employers to assume greater social and financial responsibility for dismissals. It seeks fairness in situations where businesses announce redundancies or at the end of prolonged periods of temporary employment - in other words when employment ends through no fault of the employee. Employees perceive these situations as exceptionally unjust," says Lauri Lyly, Director of the work environment department at the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions - SAK.

According to the latest SAK statistical review, about 34,000 employees would have been covered by the new package, had it been in force last year. The debate on improving security for employees threatened with redundancy began when SAK made this a prime negotiating objective in the autumn 2002 incomes policy bargaining round. By the time of the autumn 2004 incomes policy talks, the idea of a security package had already become a common goal of the entire trade union movement in Finland.

Click here for details of the improved security package for employees under threat of redundancy.