Working hours, leave and absences
Working hours act, collective bargaining agreements and locally agreed working time arrangements affect the agreement on working hours.
In this section:
Regular working hours
The Working Hours Act regulates working hours and how they are defined. In general, the Working Hours Act applies to all work done in employment and the civil service. Working hours can also be agreed for specific sectors in collective bargaining agreements or at the company level, through working time arrangements.
Deviating from regular working hours
The Working Hours Act regulates working hours and how they are defined. In general, the Working Hours Act applies to all work done in employment and the civil service. Working hours can also be agreed for specific sectors in collective bargaining agreements or at the company level, through working time arrangements.
Leave and absences
Regular working hours
The Working Hours Act regulates working hours and how they are defined. In general, the Working Hours Act applies to all work done in employment and the civil service. Working hours can also be agreed for specific sectors in collective bargaining agreements or at the company level, through working time arrangements.
The Working Hours Act is not limited to any specific region: it applies to all work done in Finland. Collective bargaining agreements and possible contractual terms on working hours in local bargaining agreements may also determine regular working hours.
“Working hours” means all the time spent on work as well as the time when the employee is obliged to be at work at the employer’s disposal. Daily rest time (meal breaks) are not consid-ered as working hours when the employee has the option of leaving the workplace. Nor is travel time to work considered working hours unless it is simultaneously considered perfor-mance of work.
The Working Hours Act does not apply to certain categories of work set out in Section 2 of the Act: management of a company, housework, work provided for in other legislation or work specifically mentioned in Section 2 of the Act.
Working Hours Act
The Working Hours Act establishes such matters as maximum daily and weekly working hours, overtime and resulting compensation, Sunday work regulations, rest time, and the employer’s working time recording obligations
Read more: Working Hours Act (Finlex)
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Regular working hours under the Working Hours Act
The general provision of the Working Hours Act is that daily working time is no more than 8 hours a day. However, both a collective bargaining agreement and an agreement between the employer and employee can be used, on certain terms, to make an exception to this provision of the Working Hours Act. If the collective bargaining agreement binding the company contains a provision on regular daily working hours, it must be followed in the first instance.
If there is no generally binding collective bargaining agreement in the sector, and the employer is not a member of an employer federation and thus subject to a normally binding agreement, an exception can be made to daily regular working hours on the direct basis of the Working Hours Act. Under this provision, the employer and employee can agree separately to lengthen daily working time by one hour on the condition that weekly working time does not exceed 48 hours. In addition, regular working time must average out at 40 hours a week over a four-month period.
The general provision of the Working Hours Act is that weekly working time is no more than 40 hours a week. However, the general rule allows for arranging an average weekly working time; in this case, the weekly working time must average out at 40 hours a week over a period of no more than 52 weeks.
However, the statutory flexibility to weekly working time does not allow an exception to the 8 hours of daily working time. This means that based on the law alone, weekly working time can only be set as an average by changing the number of workdays, not their duration.
The collective bargaining agreement can be used to make an exception to the main 40-hour rule, for example by reducing the regular weekly working hours, in which case the terms of the applicable collective bargaining agreement are followed.
Under the Working Hours Act, periodical working hours can only be used in sectors specifically defined by Section 7 of the Act. There is no limit to regular daily or weekly working hours in periodical working hours. However, periodical working hours must by law be arranged so there is no more than 120 working hours during a three-week period or 80 hours during a two-week period. A collective bargaining agreement may also contain provisions on periodical working hours.
A generally binding collective bargaining agreement can be used to make an exception to the regular daily or weekly working hours under the Working Hours Act. A collective bargaining agreement may be used to agree on average regular working hours as long as the working hours average out at 40 hours over a period of 52 weeks. The provisions of the Working Hours Act on rest times and weekly time off limit the timing and duration of work shifts, however.
Regular working hours under the Working Hours Act
Additional work means work in addition to the working hours in the employment contract but below the maximum regular working hours laid down in the Working Hours Act (8 hours a day and 40 hours a week). Additional work can only be done with the employee’s consent, unless the employment contract provides for additional work. An employee is entitled to refuse additional work on days marked as free time on the roster if he or she has a justifiable personal reason.
Normal pay for working time is paid for additional work. Collective bargaining agreements may contain provisions on pay for additional work.
Overtime is work which exceeds the regular working time of 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week in the Working Hours Act. Overtime requires the employer’s initiative, and it can only be done using the express consent given by the employee each time. If an average number of working hours is agreed, overtime is work which is done in addition to the work in the roster.
The maximum durations in the Working Hours Act limit the assignment of overtime. An employee’s working time, including overtime, cannot exceed an average of 48 hours a week over a period of four months.
Under the Working Hours Act, daily overtime must be compensated with 1.5 times pay for the first two hours and double pay for each following hour. The employer and employee can agree on full or partial compensation of overtime as proportional time off: for example, one hour of overtime at 1.5 times pay can be exchanged for 1.5 hours of paid time off.
In addition, you should always check the provisions of your collective bargaining agreement on overtime and overtime pay.
Sunday work
Sunday work, under the Working Hours Act, is work done on a Sunday or other church holiday. Church holidays are Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Midsummer Day and All Saints’ Day.
Sunday work can be done with an employee’s consent when the nature of the work means it is regularly done on Sundays and holidays, or when it is agreed on in the employment contract.
Under the Working Hours Act, Sunday work must be compensated with double pay. The Sunday increase does not affect the size of any remuneration paid to the employee for additional work, overtime or emergency work. These types of remuneration are calculated on the basis of the employee’s basic salary. Your collective bargaining agreement may contain provisions on Sunday work.
Rest periods
Under the Working Hours Act, an employee has the right to an hour-long break if the working day is at least six hours long. The break cannot be timed for the very start or very end of the working day. However, the employer and employee can agree on a shorter break, but no shorter than half an hour. If the working hours exceed 10 hours a day, the employee has, if he or she wishes, the right to a break of no more than half an hour after eight hours’ work.
A collective bargaining agreement can make an exception to the provisions on daily rest time. A collective bargaining agreement may contain clauses specifically about rest times or they may be agreed at the company level either in full or in part. In addition, a collective bargaining agreement may contain clauses about coffee and recreation break. If the employer is not a member of an employers’ federation, but instead adheres to a collective bargaining agreement on the generally binding principle, he or she may not use clauses on break times which require company-level agreement.
If the employee may freely leave the workplace during a break, the break is not considered working time. In other cases, the break must be given as working time.
Under the Working Hours Act, the general rule is that an employee is entitled to at least 11 hours of uninterrupted rest time during the 24 hours following the start of each shift. An employee doing periodical work must be given at least nine hours of uninterrupted rest time.
The employer and staff representatives can, with employee consent, agree on reduced daily rest. However, it must be no shorter than seven hours. In addition, Section 25 of the Working Hours Act lists the situations in which exceptions from daily rest time and an exceptionally short five-hour rest time is permitted.
The employee has the right to at least 35 hours of uninterrupted leisure time once a week. This must generally fall on a Sunday. Any uninterrupted 35-hour period on the roster meets this requirement.
Weekly leisure time can also be arranged for an average of 35 hours over 14 days so that there is at least 24 hours of leisure time a week.
In uninterrupted shift work, weekly leisure time can be arranged over a 12-week period so that it is an average of 24 hours a time. Uninterrupted shift work means a working time arrangement in which the shifts change regularly, and work is done every day of the week.
If the employee’s weekly working time is no more than 3 hours, the employee may be given a continuous 24 hours of leisure time, instead of 35, once every seven days.
If the employee works during his or her weekly leisure time, he or she must be compensated for the time spent on work by reducing his or her regular working time respectively. Alternatively, with the employee’s consent, the compensation for lack of weekly leisure time can be paid as money by the hour.
The collective bargaining agreement may contain clauses on weekly leisure time. An employer must always check whether making an exception requires agreement at the company level. As a general rule, an employer that is not a member of an employers’ federation cannot invoke exceptions that require company-level agreement.
Working hours documents
If the regular working time agreed is an average, the employer is obligated to create a working time adjustment system. The system must be created at least for the statutory period during which the regular working hours must average out. The system must show the regular working time in each week.
An employer must create a roster which displays each employee’s work and leisure times in more detail than the adjustment system.
The working time adjustment system and roster can be contained in the same document. You should try to make the roster for the same period as the working time adjustment system, unless it is extremely difficult due to the irregularity of the work, for example. However, the roster must be created as far ahead as possible.
The roster must display the start and end of regular working time, as well as daily rest time. The roster must be shown to employees as early as possible, but no later than a week before the start date. Once employees have been shown the roster, it can generally only be changed by employee consent. To ensure operations in the workplace, however, the employer may change the roster because of a pressing reason related to work organization, if the employer did not know about it when creating the roster.
In work where the timing of regular working hours does not vary, or in which floating or flexible working time is used, the roster can be made valid until further notice. An agreement on floating or flexible working time replaces a roster when it shows the principles applied to the timing of working hours.
Collective bargaining agreements may include clauses on the creation of rosters.
Deviating from regular working hours
The Working Hours Act regulates working hours and how they are defined. Working hours can also be agreed for specific sectors in collective bargaining agreements or at the company level, through working time arrangements. Here is some information about the possibilities to deviate from the general provisions on regular working hours.
In addition, a collective bargaining agreement may specifically facilitate deviations from its provisions on regular working hours, either by local bargaining or agreeing at the workplace level. For local bargaining, following the procedural requirements of the collective bargaining agreement is often necessary.
If you as an employer are bound by a generally binding collective bargaining agreement (non-union employer or not a member of an employer confederation), you can use the local bargaining option on regular working hours enabled by the collective bargaining agreement. If you do this, you must follow the other parts of the provisions for local bargaining in the generally binding collective bargaining agreement, but you do not need to follow the provisions on negotiating sequence or approval regarding local bargaining.
The ability to deviate from regular working hours arrangements is an exception to the main rule, under which an employer may not use the local bargaining options in generally binding collective bargaining agreements made possible by employment legislation. You must agree on regular working hours arrangements with an employee representative, or if none has been elected, jointly with all employees.
Leave and absences
Annual leave and sick leave are among the most common reasons for employee absence from work.
Other reasons for absence may be parenthood or compassionate leave, study or sabbatical leave, as well as completion of national service. Several pieces of employment legislation and collective bargaining agreements regulate employee leave and absence. In addition, the employer and employee can always agree on unpaid leave.
Annual Holidays Act
Per the name, the Act contains provisions on annual holidays. The Act lays out how employees accrue paid annual leave during employment. It contains rules for paying annual holiday pay, awarding annual holiday and how to act if an employee falls ill on holiday.
Read more: Annual Holidays Act (Finlex)
Annual leave
Annual leave is the longest period of time off from work, and it affects all employers.
The year during which employees accrue annual leave (“leave accrual year”) is different from the calendar year: 1 April to 31 March. During that time, an employee earns either 2 or 2.5 days of leave per full month, depending on how long he or she has been employed. If, by the end of the leave accrual year, employment has continuously lasted less than a year, the employee generally has the right to two days of annual leave for each full month. When employment has lasted more than a year, the employee earns 2.5 days of annual leave for each full month. The transition from earning two days per month to 2.5 days per month is always on 1 April. When calculating the length of annual leave, the number of leave days is rounded up to the nearest full day.
Either the 14-day rule or the 35-hour rule is used for earning annual leave. The 14-day rule applies to employees whose contract says they work at least 14 days each month, every month. The 35-hour rule applies to employees who do not meet the conditions of the 14-day rule and who instead work at least 35 hours a month. Only one rule applies to an employee at a time, not both.
For employees under the 14-day rule, every month they work for 14 days or the equivalent of days at work counts as a full month for earning leave. For employees under the 35-hour rule, every month they work for 35 hours or the equivalent of hours at work counts as a full month for earning leave.
Family leave
Under the Employment Contracts Act, an employee is entitled to time off when he or she is eligible for maternity allowance, special maternity allowance, paternity allowance or parental allowance.
By law, the employer is not obligated to pay wages during an employee’s family leave. However, if the employer pays the employee wages based on an employment contract or collective bargaining agreement during a period when the employee is entitled to the allowances above, the employer can apply to Kela for the parental allowances for itself. If you are an employer, you inform Kela how much you have paid your employee in wages and compensation.
In addition, as an employer you are entitled to €2,500 in family leave compensation if all of the following apply:
- You, the employer, pay your employee wages based on an employment contract or collective bargaining agreement for the maternity allowance period continuously for at least one month.
- You have been employing your employee for at least three months before the start of the allowance period.
- The employment contract is at least one year in duration.
- The employee’s working hours before the allowance period began were at least 80% of the full-time working hours in the sector.
As an employer, you can apply for family leave compensation as soon as you have paid one month of wages while the mother is receiving her maternity allowance. You must apply for family leave compensation no later than 6 months of the end of the parent’s parental allowance period.
If, as an employer, you are obligated to pay your employee holiday pay or holiday compensation for annual leave earned on the basis of maternity allowance, special maternity allowance, paternity allowance or parental allowance, you can apply to Kela for annual leave cost compensation. The application period for annual leave compensation ends when 6 months have passed since the parent stopped receiving the parental allowance.
Maternity leave begins between 50 and 30 days (approximately 5 weeks) before the employee’s baby’s due date, and it lasts 105 working days. “Working days” mean Monday–Saturday, excluding public holidays.
Paternity leave lasts up to 54 working days or about 9 weeks. The father may take paternity leave of up to 18 working days, or about 3 weeks, after the child’s birth at the same time the mother receives maternity or parental allowance. The father may use the rest of his paternity allowance days after the end of the parental allowance period. He can also choose to use all his paternity allowance days after the end of the maternity and parental allowance period if he so wishes. A father may not transfer his leave to the mother.
Parents can take parental leave (158 working days from the end of the maternity allowance period; for adoptive parents, 234 working days from the child’s birth, but no less than 200 working days) full-time or part-time. A parent in a registered partnership is entitled to parental leave if the other partner gave birth to or adopted a child aged under 7 after the partnership was registered.
The mother and father each has the opportunity to take parental leave in up to two periods. Each period must last at least 12 working days. The parents can also take part-time parental leave. In this case, each parent agrees with his and her employer on reduced working hours and corresponding reduced pay for at least two months. Parents on part-time parental leave can either care for the child on alternating days or weeks, or by one parent caring for the child in the morning and the other in the afternoon.
Child-care leave
When the parental allowance period ends, an employee has the right to child-care leave to care for his or her child or another child living permanently in the household. The employee has this right until the child turns three. Adoptive parents have the right to child-care leave until two years have passed since adoption. However, a parent is not entitled to child-care leave when the child has started school.
The minimum duration of child-care leave is one month. An employee may split child-care leave into two periods, at most. However, the employer and employee may also agree on more than two child-care periods each lasting less than a month. Only one of the child’s parents or guardians may be on child-care leave at a time. However, the other parent may use a child-care leave period at the same time as the other parent is on maternal or parental leave.
Part-time child-care leave
An employee is entitled to part-time child-care leave until the child has finished the second class of primary school. If the child has to attend extended compulsory education, the parent is entitled to part-time child-care leave until the child finishes the third year of education. The parent of a disabled or chronically ill child requiring special care and parenting is entitled to part-time child-care leave until the child turns 18.
An employee is entitled to part-time child-care leave if he or she has been working for the same employer for a total of at least six months during the last year. As an employer, you may only refuse to reduce your employee’s daily or weekly working hours if to do so would severely impair your operations.
Temporary child-care leave
An employee is entitled to up to four days of temporary child-care leave at a time to care for a child aged under 10 living in the same household who has suddenly fallen ill (temporary child-care leave). By law, this care leave is unpaid, but under collective bargaining agreements it is generally paid.
In addition, an employee has the right to be absent from work briefly if he or she urgently needs to be present because of an unexpected, compelling illness or accident in the family (absence for compelling family reasons).
If, however, an employee needs to be absent from work to care for a family member or other next of kin, the employer must try to arrange duties so the employee can take some time off work temporarily (leave to care for a family member or other next of kin). The employer and employee must agree together on the duration and arrangements of the leave. This is not an absolute employee right to absence from work, but the employer is obligated to try to arrange work so the employee can be absent.
An employee must inform his or her employer about taking leave no later than two months before the leave begins. An employee who adopts a child must only inform his or her employer of the parental leave two months before the leave begins if possible. However, for types of leave that last up to 12 working days, the employee only has to inform the employer one month beforehand. Even when an employee cannot inform his or her employer two months in advance because his or her spouse is starting work, that employee still has the right to go on parental leave with just one month’s notice if it does not severely inconvenience the employer.
An employee can also change the start date of leave for which he or she has given with one month’s notice if there are reasonable grounds for doing so. Unless the employee and employer otherwise agree, interrupting or moving the date of the leave is only possible when there are reasonable grounds related to changed circumstances of caring for the child. Before informing your employer of leave, you should forecast how you and the other parent will use and share family leave.
Sick leave
If an employee cannot work because of an illness or accident, he or she has the right to pay during sickness.
If the employee has been employed for at least a month, he or she has the right under the Employment Contracts Act to full pay for the period of disability up to the end of the ninth day following the day of falling ill. In employment that has lasted under a month, the employee has the right to 50% of his or her salary. Collective bargaining agreements often obligate employers to pay sick pay for longer periods than this. If as an employer you have paid your employee sick pay for longer than 1+9 days because of a collective bargaining agreement, you have the right to collect the sickness allowance entitled to your employee for the extra days.
An employee does not have the right to sick pay if he or she has caused his or her incapacity to work intentionally or through gross negligence. When you as an employer ask your employee for a reliable explanation of work incapacity, the employee must be able to present one. This could be a doctor’s note containing an ICD code.