📋 Tender Overview
At todays sitting the government initiated amendments to the law drafted on the basis of a goodwill agreement between the social partners concluded in early April . The amendment will pilot variable hourly arrangements in retail that allow flexible use of working time for 2.5 years. Such agreements help employers to be more flexible in organizing the working time of their employees and to cope better with conditions where the workload and labor needs may change temporarily due to the season.Modern labor law must keep pace with changes in the labor market providing workers with the necessary protection and a safe working environment while being flexible enough to maintain the competitiveness of employers. Therefore we want to be able to flexibly agree to increase working hours for example during campaigns but to reduce the employment of employees through contracts under the law of obligations which do not offer employees the same protection as working under an employment contract. At the same time the employee retains the right to give up working on the basis of variable hours explained Minister of Health and Labor Tanel Kiik .Under the variable hours agreement an employee may work up to eight hours in addition to his normal working hours for a period of seven days. Variable hourly arrangements must meet the following conditionsa variable hourly contract may be entered into by an employer engaged in the retail tradea variable hourly contract may be concluded with a worker who works part-time for a period of 12 hours or more in a seven-day period and whose hourly rate is at least 1.2 times the minimum hourly ratethe variable hour agreement must be in writingall variable hours that the employer may offer under the new agreement are voluntary and to be agreed separately the wish to work under a variable hour agreement must come from the employee. The employee must also acknowledge receipt of the offered variable hours in a form that can be reproduced in writingthe employer must provide variable hours at least 24 hours in advancethe employer keeps separate records of the employees variable hoursvariable hours can be summed upan employer can enter into a variable hour agreement with up to 17.5 of its employees which means that the agreement can be concluded by an employer with at least six employees.The regulation of variable hourly agreements has a fixed term and is valid for 2.5 years. The changes have been introduced for a fixed period which will allow the social partners to assess the effects before the end of the period and decide whether it is appropriate to extend the conclusion of variable hourly agreements to other sectors.
