Agreeing on working hours
When drawing up the employment contract, it is vital to pay attention to the terms on working hours and negotiate them to suit your own needs. A contract with variable working hours as an employee called to work as needed is suited to situations e.g. where the employee wants to work in a gig-type work role, choosing their own shifts, but the gigs in question are more frequent.
When compiling the employment contract, the timing of the working hours (morning, evening or night shift) can also be agreed on, as well as whether the worker is willing to work weekends and be on standby.
Contract with variable working hours (so-called zero-hour contract)
A contract with variable working hours refers to an employment contract where the working hours vary as agreed, in accordance with the terms of the employment contract. The contract can decree a certain minimum number of hours – e.g. 115 hours within three weeks – or it may state that the working time is called to work as needed. The contract with variable working hours is usually signed as valid until further notice, which means that the employee’s employment relationship is valid continuously.
Regulations improving the status of an employee working under a contract with variable working hours have been negotiated to the collective agreements of the private sector. The collective agreement for the private social services sector, for example, includes regulations that:
- limit contracts with variable working hours signed at the employer’s initiative
- obligate the employer to increase the minimum number of working hours in the employment contract within certain circumstances, and
- relate to the right of payment during sick leave.
The Employment Contracts Act also has a regulation on compensation from the duration of a termination of notice period regarding a contract with variable working hours.
Limitations on agreeing on a contract with variable working hours
Increasing minimum working hours
If an employee’s actual working hours from the previous 12 months show that the minimum working hours (lower limit of the terms on working hours) agreed on do not comply with the actual demand for labour, the employer must, at the employee’s request, negotiate on changing this term to reflect the actual labour demands.
If the employer and the employees do not jointly otherwise agree, the minimum working hours must the determined on the basis of the average actual working hours of the previous 12 months, i.e. on the basis of the employee’s average working hours per week per the balancing period during the previous 12-month period.
However, if the actual average working hours deviate from the hours recorded in the employment contract by only 0–4 hours per week, the minimum hours in the contract do not need to be changed.
If the employer can give a written, factual explanation for why the future demand for labour will deviate from the employee’s actual average working hours, the minimum working hours will then be determined based on these presented future working hours.
Based on the Employment Contracts Act, however, after just six months of working for the same employer, an employee will have the right to get a well-founded response from the employer regarding the option of increasing the regular working hours agreed on in the employment contract.
Right to sick pay
An employee working under a contract with variable working hours is entitled to a sick pay, if the shift that they had to skip due to an illness was entered to their shift list, had been agreed on by other means, or it would otherwise be clear, considering the circumstances, that the employee would have been working, had they not fallen ill.
Regarding the period after the current shift list has ended, the sick pay is determined based on the employee’s average working hours. The average working hours are calculated, for example, based on the work carried out over the past six months or during the previous holiday accumulation year. The key part is to choose a period of time that proves the average hours the employee would have worked during their sick leave.