Sunday pay is not going anywhere

Last summer, the Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment set up a working group to update the Working Hours Act in order to meet the needs of the working world today. The Act currently in force dates back to 1996, while its predecessor was enacted in the 1940’s. The legislative reform project is based on the Government Programme. The working group is expected to finish its assignment by the end of June. The Act needs to be updated for reasons including the fact that regular, full-time, strictly workplace-dependent work has become increasingly rare.

Nevertheless, the topic of eliminating Sunday pay has not been on the working group’s agenda. The topic has recently been discussed in public, raised by people such as restaurateur Hans Välimäki, who has declared Sunday pay to be a relic from the past. Tarja Kröger, Senior Adviser responsible for drafting labour legislation at the Ministry, says that, at least so far, the topic has not even been discussed as part of the working group’s meetings. She answered the question on Sunday pay at an event organised by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, where she was presenting details of the legislative project.

Conversely, local bargaining has featured on the agendas of the working group’s meetings. At the event, Kröger explained that law needs to remain at a sufficiently general level, only providing the parameters, in order to enable labour market organisations to negotiate collective agreements based on the needs of different sectors. The extent to which the law should allow bargaining at an even lower level – i.e. between individual employers and employees – is, in Kröger’s words, a ‘hard question’. She would not start doling out such powers without setting any conditions. Examples of how working hours can be applied at a local level include various forms of flexitime and working hours banks.