The government counsellor, Harri Hietala on Thursday handover the report to Justice and Labour Minister Jari Lindström in Helsinki on Thursday. Photo – Str / Lehtikuva.
The government counsellor, Harri Hietala on Thursday presented a report which proposed expansion of local labour agreements to allow greater freedom in employment conditions.
The report handed over to the minister of justice and labour in practice proposes more flexibility in terms of wages and working hours.
Hietala’s report also recommends expanding flexibility in local labour agreements with the unorganised companies.
Currently, unorganised companies cannot take advantage of certain situations due to restrictive provisions in the collective bargaining agreements.
The report calls for the working hours to be made more flexible and possible legislation on working time bank.
According to the report, a local labour agreement with a provision of up to 10 working hours a day and 48 hours a week could be agreed.
Furthermore, the report also calls for strengthening of the position of employees.
“Employee representative should be included in the supervisory board, board of directors or in the executive committee if there are less than a hundred employees within the entity.
In addition, the agreement of employee representation should be a condition on the legally binding local labour agreement whenever there are 30 employees in the employer’s service," the report said.
Hietala believes the broadening of the local labour agreements would be easy to implement when the parties pertinent to the collective labour agreements negotiate on feasibility.
If the negotiation does not succeed, the local labour agreement should be facilitated through legislation.
The government will evaluate the report before taking further step in this regard.
Improvement of the local labour agreements is one of the government top priority areas.
