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Cooperative negotiations of basic mail delivery of production, postal services and administration 2019 started in regions on the 5th Feb 2019 and they are assumed to end on the 19th March 2019. As the negotiations are regional, time schedule differences may occur.
What will the union (PAU) do for their members about the situation?
The trustees educated by PAU will introduce in the negotiations all the arguments of employees and will attempt to minimize the number of redundancies and part-timings. PAU and its trustees will inform of the proceedings of cooperative negotiations and answer all the questions arisen by the uncertain situation. We have raised the issue as a public matter in the context of the service level of Posti – by suggesting that staff reductions will inevitably deteriorate service level and, ultimately, politicians will determine through Postal Act, which is the adequate service level for Posti to offer its clients. We aim to record in the forthcoming government program that postal services are a basic service and the state should abandon dividend claims on Posti and start financing the unprofitable postal services in the sparsely populated area. Dividend claims contribute, in their part, to staff reduction.
These cooperative negotiations are an outcome of the Post Act reform carried out by the government in 2016. This reform gave Posti the opportunity to slow down the delivery of mail and as a result, distribution days and staff can be reduced. PAU tried to oppose this reform by big campaigns, but the government party representants believed that postal services will be sufficiently fulfilled with fully enabled competition in the postal markets.
Who is doing the job, when employees are made redundant or part-timers?
That is the employer’s problem. The employer is responsible for ensuring enough workers in relation to the workload.
The employees do their work within the working hours agreed in their Contract of Employment and in the pre-booked rota with normal pace taking all the pauses. According to the law, doing overtime is always voluntary. When agreeing on overtime, the initiative must come from the employer where the employee can agree.
Is the employer allowed to use leased employees while making own employees redundant?
The employer has the right to use leased employees and subcontractors. This is an immoral and bad personality policy, even though it is not illegal or against the collective agreement.
Who decides on the redundancies, part-timers or lay-offs?
The employer. The order of reducing agreed in the collective agreement must be followed.
What if an employee refuses to work part-time?
According to the Employment Contracts Act, the employer may, by a unilateral declaration, part-time the working time agreed in the employee's employment contract. If the employee refuses this, the employer considers that the person must him/herself resign and, in this case, the employer has no production and economic grounds to terminate the employment. If the employee resigns, the employment agency will impose a 90 days’ waiting time, during which the employee is not entitled to receive earnings-based unemployment allowance.
What is the order of redundancy, ie. in which order will employees be fired, part-timed or laid off?
The order of redundancy is agreed in the collective agreement. In the Collective Bargaining Agreement of Communications and Logistics (section 4 subsection 6) it is provided: “Priorities in staffing reductions. In connection with termination or layoffs not owing to the employee, the rule must be adhered to, if possible, that the last employees to be discharged or laid off shall be those important to the company’s business or needed in special tasks, employees who are difficult to employ, and employees who have lost some of their work ability during work for the employer in question. Secondarily, also the duration of the employment relationship and the amount of the employee’s responsibility for supporting others are taken into account.”
This order of redundancy also applies to part-timing.
What is the common practice of order of redundancy?
According to the well-established interpretation of the Labour Court, a professional worker who is important to the operation of a company is defined as professional workers with special knowledge or skills, or with special training, as well as workers who, on the basis of their skills, education, experience or other similar ability or skill, are important to the company.
Secondarily, the duration of the employment relationship and the number of maintenance obligations are examined.
The employer must be able to prove that the provision of order of redundancy of employees has been followed.
I have several consecutive fixed employment contracts. How is the continuous duration of the employment relationship interpreted when calculating the period of notice?
Fixed-term employment relationships prior to permanent employment are taken into account when calculating one-time employment if the break is less than 8 days.
How are pregnant, maternity, special maternity, paternity and parental leave treated in co-determination negotiations?
The negotiations automatically concern those on special maternity, paternity and parental leave (Note! Excluding partial care leave), but they are protected during dismissal.
For pregnant women, the rule is that dismissal of a pregnant worker is considered to be due to pregnancy, provided that the employer is aware of the pregnancy. So don’t forget to tell your employer about your pregnancy.
LAY OFF
What is lay off all about?
Lay off means that the employer is entitled in certain conditions provided in the Employment Act to interrupt work and payroll. The employment remains valid. The employer is entitled to lay off only if there is an economic of production reason to terminate employment contract or if the employer's ability to provide work has deteriorated temporarily and it is not possible to provide other jobs or training for the employee.
Whom can the employer lay off?
Lay off concerns mainly permanent employees. Those with fixed-term contracts can be laid off only if the employer were entitled to lay off employees on fixed-term basis.
How are those laid off determined?
The employer first sorts out the employees willing to be laid off and targets the lay offs to those. If there are not enough voluntary employees, the employer is entitled to make a choice concerning the remaining lay off need based on of the order of redundancy provided in the collective agreement.
How and when will the employer inform about layoffs?
The employer informs of the layoffs after the cooperative negotiations have ended. As an exception to the collective agreement it is agreed that the employer complies with the 14 days’ notification time provided in the Employment Contracts Act. The layoff must be notified to the employee in person. The notification must include reason, starting time and the estimated duration of the layoff.
It is furthermore agreed with the employer that the layoffs are carried so that the own liability days provided in the Act on Unemployment Benefits (five working days) will accrue for the layoffs lasting over five working days. The own liability days must accrue during eight consecutive calendar weeks. The own liability time is mainly determined once a year at most. Earnings-related unemployment allowance is not paid for the own liability days.
Will a laid off employee get earnings-related unemployment allowance?
For the time of layoff the unemployment fund pays earnings-related allowance, if other preconditions for receiving earnings-related unemployment allowance are valid.
Unemployment allowance can be only received on basis of the statement from unemployment agency. For this fact the one laid off must register to the unemployment agency latest in the first day of layoff to be a jobless jobseeker and be prepared to receive whole-time work.
Unemployment allowance can be paid, if the working hours are maximum 80 per cent of a whole-time worker’s working hours (30 hours 36 minutes / week time of 38 hours 15 minutes). The working hours are checked in layoff cases weekly. If an employee works whole work days during one week and is laid off during part of the days, he/she will receive full earnings-related unemployment allowance for layoff days.
If an employee works from Monday to Thursday, is laid off on Friday and the weekly working time is 30 hours 36 minutes or less, an earnings-related unemployment allowance is paid for Friday.
Will layoff time accrue annual holiday?
When calculating working days, layoff days are counted like ordinary working days, but at most 30 working days at a time (in case the employer is totally laid off). In practice, this means that if the layoff lasts at a time at most 30 working days, it will have no effect on accrual of annual holiday, so the holidays will accrue normally, like at work. In calculation, only those days are counted, which would have been the employee’s working days. This implies that when counting the accrual of annual holiday the calendar part accruing layoff holiday may be longer than 30 days.
Working time will cut the counting of 30 days. If the employee is at work in between the layoffs, the counting of 30 days will start from the beginning at the start of each separate period.
Is is possible to lay off those on sick leave?
If the employer lays off an employee on a sick leave, it has the duty to pay sick leave until the end of incapacity to work.
How can I get to the additional days of earnings-based unemployment benefit (s.c. pension tube)?
One can get to the additional days of earnings-related unemployment benefit, if one is born in 1957 or later and will be 61 before the 500 maximum days of earnings-related unemployment benefit has been paid full. In practice this means that at the end of employment the person in question needs to be at least 59 years and 1 month old. In addition, the person in question must have at least a five days’ work history during the last 20 years.
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