If there are unexpected employer-employee negotiations, the order in which employees are made redundant matters

We put five questions on the order of termination of employment to PAM’s legal manager Arja Pohjola.

What is meant by the order of termination of employment?
“The order of termination of employment has to do with financial and production-related grounds for termination, and usually in situations where large numbers of employees are made redundant at once. When employment is terminated, the employer basically decides who is made redundant.”

Who enjoys special protection when employment is terminated?
“Normally the employer is entitled to select which employees are made redundant. In legal practice and under the law there are certain limiting factors, e.g. termination of employment may not be due to pregnancy, so a pregnant employee cannot be made redundant because she is pregnant. Other reasons include discriminatory grounds, i.e. employment may not be terminated on discriminatory grounds – there must be an appropriate and weighty reason. Discriminatory grounds include termination based for example on personal conflict or age, which is illegal.
Shop stewards have special employment protection. So if there are dismissals at a workplace on financial or production-related grounds, the shop steward is the last to go, if no other work is available. Health and safety representatives have similar protection from dismissal.”

The order of termination of employment can be agreed in collective agreements. Has this been agreed in PAM’s collective agreements?
“Collective agreements in service sectors do not generally contain agreement on the order of termination of employment, but one exception is the collective agreement for the security guarding sector. To my knowledge, agreement on the order of termination of employment is most common in collective agreements in industry. The essential point in agreements on protection from dismissal in collective agreements is that they do not set out the grounds for termination, only the selection criteria applied to persons whose employment is terminated. Even if an order of termination of employment is specified in a collective agreement, breaching it does not make termination illegal.”

PAM’s objectives for the parliamentary elections state that situations where employment is terminated on financial and production-related grounds can be improved by requiring an order of termination of employment. What does this mean in practice?
“It would mean there being a provision in the law requiring that if employees are made redundant on financial or production-related grounds, the employer would have to factor in certain matters such as length of career, whether the employee has maintenance obligations or has lost working capacity while in the employer’s service. Traditionally employers have also been entitled to give priority to key skilled employees. If there were to be a provision on order of termination in the law, it would restrict employers’ ability to decide in cases of dismissal."

In what way does an order of termination provide security for young employees, for example?
"Even young employees are not young for ever. As working careers get ever longer, an order of termination of employment could also benefit them in the long run. If an employee has a family despite being young, then the family maintenance obligation is a factor in the order of termination. If a young employee has had an accident at work, the employer must recognise that if their working capacity is reduced due to the accident, the employee should not be made redundant first."