The Legal 500

Even though many industries have pulled out of the current economic situation even with moderate personnel reductions, major redundancies and layoffs could have been avoided completely or at least it could have been possible to decrease the number of persons being made redundant in several companies, if the income-based incentive programmes had been prepared at the time to cover also the demands, large-scale savings objectives and improvement of the profitability set by the prospective recession. As a result of the avoidance of the large scale redundancies, employees’ degree of satisfaction, motivation and confidence in the future, and, with this in mind, the profitability of the company could be better at the present moment.

Employers allowed to monitor employees’ email and internet browsing information.

As a result of the enforcement of the Act on Protection of Privacy in Electronic Communications (516/2004) (hereinafter the “APPEC”) in 2004, which implemented the directive 2002/58/EC, and whereby the regime applicable to telecom operators was extended to cover also companies and other corporate and association subscribers, Finland has had one of the strictest privacy legislations. The consequences of the legislation were not totally foreseeable. The provisions of APPEC have been problematic especially as concerns a corporate or association subscriber’s possibility to detect and bring into criminal investigation misuses targeted towards or exploiting the corporate or association subscriber’s own communications network. In practise corporate and association subscribers were not allowed to collect identification data (such as email or internet browsing information) to present evidence on suspected misuse of their communication network.

The European Court of Justice ("ECJ") handed down a judgment on 27 November 2008 in relation to a reference for preliminary ruling from the Finnish Supreme Court. The referred questions concerned the obligations of an assignee towards the employees' of a transferred company. The ECJ ruled that the assignee cannot be liable for the deterioration of an employee's working conditions if the assignee has fulfilled its obligations under the transferred employment agreement until it expires. However, the employee is entitled to salary and other benefits during the time of notice if employment is terminated due to such deterioration.

According to Section 10 of Chapter 1 of the Finnish Employment Contracts Act (55/2001), Transfer of business, the transfer of the employer’s business refers to transfer of an enterprise, business, corporate body, foundation or an operative part thereof to another employer, if the business or part thereof to be transferred, disregarding whether it is a central or ancillary activity, remains the same or similar after the transfer.