COURT
Equal pay and transfer of business
The Finnish Supreme Court has issued a preliminary ruling (SAC:2024:9) on the obligation to harmonize wages after a transfer of a business. A hospital district had paid different salaries to paramedics performing the same or equivalent work from 1 January 2014 to 16 August 2019, when the paramedics who had received higher salaries had joined it by transfer of business on 1 January 2014. As of 1 May 2014, the hospital district had switched to the municipal general collective agreement for all paramedics, whereby the pay per task of paramedics performing the same work was determined in a uniform manner and the differences in pay were due to the pay supplements paid to the higher-paid paramedics.
The Supreme Court held that the Hospital District had not acted in breach of the requirement of equal treatment laid down in the Employment Contracts Act. The measures taken by the hospital district to eliminate the pay gap as of 1 January 2019 could be regarded as sufficient. However, it is still not possible to derive from the case law any precise maximum generally acceptable period within which harmonization of the pay gap should be achieved.
LAW
Amendments to industrial peace legislation sent out for comments
The Finnish Government has circulated a draft proposal on amendments to the so-called industrial peace for comments. The draft would introduce a number of amendments to the Collective Agreements Act, the Act on the Mediation in Labor Disputes, the Employment Contracts Act and the Maritime Labor Contracts Act. The duration of political industrial action would be limited to 24 hours and other industrial action to a maximum of two weeks. In addition, disproportionate sympathy industrial action and political industrial action exceeding the maximum duration should be avoided. The fine for industrial action in breach of the obligation to respect industrial peace would range from EUR 10,000 to EUR 150,000, and the employee would have to pay compensation (EUR 200) to their employer if they continued to take industrial action which had been declared unlawful by the court after being informed of the judgment.
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