Helsinki (07.07.2011 - Juhani Artto) Trade unions want employees in atypical jobs to have identical rights as wage and salary earners in permanent full-time jobs. However, regulations on working conditions in atypical jobs still fall short of this demand.
This is true also concerning the length of annual leave. "The logic is this: The shorter the employment relation is and the more it diverges from the typical employment relation, the poorer the annual leave rights are", Anu-Hanna Anttila, a sociologist from the University of Turku, writes on SAK's web site.
"A four-week paid annual leave has become sort of standard - a typical annual leave", she crystalises. Such annual leave is long compared to annual leave in many other countries but most wage and salary earners in Finland have even a longer paid annual leave than that.
An employment relation that has lasted a year or more accumulates 2.5 days per month annual leave. In practice it means five weeks of paid annual leave.
In short-time jobs employees acquire only 2 days per month of paid annual leave. Anttila reminds us that self-employed people do not have any rights to paid annual leave. If/when taking time off or taking annual leave their costs are fully financed by the self-employed themselves. About 160,000 people in Finland work as self-employed.