Negotiation proposal and provision of information

The change negotiation process is initiated by the employer’s written negotiation proposal. It is issued to the person(s) who are the other party to the negotiations and can also be delivered electronically.

Contents of the proposal for negotiations

The proposal must include at least the commencement time and place of the change negotiations and an outline of the suggested agenda to be addressed in the negotiations. The basic content requirements for the proposal apply both to negotiations on reducing the use of the personnel and to negotiations on other changes influencing the position of employees.

Time of issue of the proposal for negotiations

If the change negotiations only concern the latter of the above changes, there is no time limit for issuing the negotiation proposal.

Nevertheless, the aim must be to issue the proposal as early as possible considering when the employer intends to execute its decision on the change and when the resulting personnel impacts are realised.

It is also significant how large an employee group is affected by the change being considered by the employer.

The necessary information must be provided before the start of the change negotiations

Before the start of the change negotiations, the employer must also provide the employees or the employee representatives with information necessary for addressing the issue.

A proposal for negotiations on reducing the use of labour must be submitted within the time limit

When the topic of the change negotiations is employment contract terminations, lay-offs or reduc-tions of the employment contract to a part-time contract concerning one or more employees or unilateral changes to essential conditions of the employment contract, the negotiation proposal must be issued at the latest five days prior to the start of the negotiations.

Information to be provided

In this case, the proposal must include the following:

• Measures being considered by the employer and their grounds.
• Initial estimate of the number of employees affected by these measures, broken down by personnel group and, when necessary, by measure.
• Report of principles, according to which the employees affected by the measures are de-termined.
• Estimate of the time within which the measures are implemented.

The starting point is that the employee party would have the above-mentioned information availa-ble well in advance in order to prepare for the negotiations.

If there is information that cannot yet be provided in connection with the negotiation proposal, it must be provided as soon as possible, and at the latest when the negotiations start.

If the missing information is essential for a topic negotiated in the first meeting, the addressing of this topic must be postponed to a later date if the employee party so requests. However, the request to have the addressing of the topic postponed in order to get the missing information does not mean that the start date of the change negotiations should be postponed.

The negotiations can be started with the information that is available and the addressing of the topic with incomplete information is postponed to the next meeting.

Notification to the Employment and Economic Development Office

The employer must deliver the negotiation proposal concerning employment contract termina-tions, lay-offs or reductions of the employment contract to a part-time contract or unilateral changes to essential conditions of the employment contract also for the Employment and Economic Development Office’s information at the latest when the negotiations start.