Some changes to legislation to continue until the end of the year
The legislative changes will be extended from 1 July until the end of 2020. Photo: Gettyimages
Changes have been made to employment and unemployment security legislation aimed at improving the ability of people and companies to overcome the fallout of the coronavirus epidemic. These temporary changes have now been extended until the end of the year.
The Parliament of Finland has approved the government’s proposals to extend the validity of the legislative changes until the end of 2020. The laws concern lay-offs and co-operation procedures as well as the unemployment security rights of laid-off employees and self-employed persons. Many of the legislative changes have also been negotiated into temporary clauses in PAM’s collective agreements.
The derogations are mainly valid from 1 April to 31 December 2020.
Employment Contracts Act and co-operation procedure
Changes were made to the Employment Contracts Act and the Act on Co-operation within Undertakings from 1 April 2020, and the validity of these will be extended from 1 July until the end of 2020.
The lay-off notification period and the duration of co-operation negotiations on lay-offs has been shortened to five days.
The right to lay off fixed-term employees has been extended, and cancelling an employment agreement during a trial period for financial or production reasons is now possible. The take-back obligation has been extended to 9 months and applies to employees whose employment has been terminated between 1 April and 31 December 2020 for financial and production reasons.
The continuation of temporary changes also applies to e.g. the notification period for self-reporting of sick leave and shift lists. Details for particular sectors can be found here. In the case of the Retail collective agreement, some of the temporary changes end on 30 June 2020.
Right of laid-off employees to unemployment security
The validity of the temporary rules in the Unemployment Security Act on e.g. the right of laid-off employees to unemployment security and the right of self-employed persons to labour market subsidy has been extended until 31 December 2020.
You can see the changes made to legislation due to the coronavirus epidemic here (in Finnish)
You can see the changes made to PAM’s collective agreements due to coronavirus here
You can find SAK’s news item on the changes to legislation here (in Finnish)