Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2009, published 99th ILC session (2010)

Article 1 of the Convention. Forty-hour week. The Committee notes the provisions of the Working Hours Act (605/1996), as last amended in 2005, in particular sections 19–20 which fix the maximum amount of overtime to 138 hours in a four-month period, or 250 hours in a calendar year, with the possibility of agreeing on additional overtime of up to 80 hours per year while employees may be required to do up to five hours of preparation or completion work per week in addition to the maximum overtime hours. The Committee also notes that subject to these statutory numerical limits, overtime, which is defined as any work carried out on the employer’s initiative in excess of regular working hours, seems to be generally permissible, hence not limited to any specific conditions or circumstances justifying its use. The Committee wishes to refer, in this respect, to Paragraph 14 of the Reduction of Hours of Work Recommendation, 1962 (No. 116), which envisages exceptions of three kinds (permanent, temporary, periodical) to the normal hours of work and provides that the competent authorities in each country should determine the circumstances and limits of such exceptions. The Committee further refers to paragraph 79 of its General Survey of 1984 on working time in which it noted that undue facilitation of overtime, for example, by not limiting the circumstances in which it may be permitted or by allowing relatively high maximums, could in the most egregious cases tend to defeat the objective of a social standard of a 40‑hour week and make irrelevant the provisions as to normal working hours. The Committee therefore requests the Government to supply more detailed information on the conditions under which overtime is permissible in the light of the relevant provisions of Recommendation No. 116.

In addition, the Committee recalls its previous comment in which it expressed the view that allowing the averaging of working hours over a general reference period of one year appears to be too long to guarantee full application of the principle of a 40-hour week as embodied in the Convention. It once again refers to Paragraph 12(1) of Recommendation No. 116 which provides that the variable distribution of working hours over a period longer than one week should be permitted when special conditions in certain branches of activity or technical needs justify it. The Committee is obliged to reiterate that the longer the reference period, the greater the possible deviations from the regular weekly working hours, to the point of rendering eventually meaningless the very essence of the principle of progressive reduction of hours of work. The Committee requests the Government to provide full particulars, including all available statistics and any relevant documents, on working time flexibility schemes currently in place allowing weekly working hours to be averaged over a 52-week reference period, in particular the number of workers and types of enterprises concerned as well as an indication on the maximum amount of hours worked daily and weekly under such schemes.

Moreover, the Committee notes that, under section 29 of the Working Hours Act, when the practical organization of work so requires, the daily rest period may be shortened to seven hours, and even to five hours during no more than three consecutive days. The Committee considers that neither operational reasons nor the worker’s prior consent may justify such unreasonably short daily rest periods. This point has also been raised by the European Committee of Social Rights which in its 2007 conclusions found that the situation in Finland is not in conformity with Article 2(1) of the Revised Social Charter as the Working Hours Act permits daily rest period to be reduced to seven and even five hours. The Committee further considers that even though none of the Conventions Nos 1, 30 or 47 concerning hours of work – nor Recommendation No. 116 which was designed to facilitate their implementation – contains provisions on daily rest (as opposed to sectoral instruments such Conventions Nos 153 and 180 on road transport workers and seafarers respectively), the question of sufficient rest intervals between working days is intrinsically linked to the spirit of these instruments and their ultimate objective of ensuring meaningful protection against undue fatigue and also reasonable leisure and opportunities for recreation and social life. The Committee therefore requests the Government to provide additional explanations as to how a policy of reducing working hours while maintaining the standard of living may be construed to be consonant with such restrictive provisions on daily rest periods.

Part V of the report form. Application in practice. The Committee would be grateful if the Government would provide together with its next report up to date information on the practical application of the Convention, including for instance, extracts from labour inspection reports showing the number and nature of contraventions reported with regard to hours worked in excess of the 40-hour week; statistics concerning the categories and number of workers to whom the principle of 40-hour week has been applied and the number of hours worked in excess of the 40-hour week; the categories and number of workers to whom the principle of the 40-hour week has not as yet been applied and the normal hours of work applicable to these workers; official studies or reports on working time issues and especially the question of the reduction of hours of work in relation to factors such as the effect of new technologies and employment policy objectives; trends on working time arrangements as reflected in recent collective agreements, etc.