Bonuses to basic pay

Separate bonuses to basic pay are paid for working on Sundays, bank holidays, Saturdays or in the evening or nights. A remuneration of 100% is paid for work performed on Sundays and bank holidays.

The remunerations paid for work performed on Saturdays, in the evenings and at night vary between collective agreements. The time at which evening, Saturday and overtime bonuses start accumulating also varies.

Examples

The remuneration paid for evening work is usually 15 per cent of the hourly wage and it is paid between 18.00 and 22.00.
Night work often refers to hours between 22.00 and 07.00, and the remuneration paid for night work is 30–45 per cent of the hourly wage.
The remuneration paid for Saturday work is usually 20 per cent of the hourly wage and it is paid between 06.00 and 18.00.

Collective agreements also contain stipulations on whether the compensation can be made in days off and whether the employer may unilaterally decide on the form of the compensation (pay or days off).

If no collective agreement is applied to the employment, the employee is only entitled to Sunday work remuneration specified in the Working Time Act. Other remunerations may be agreed upon separately in the employment contract.

Length-of-service bonuses are based on collective agreements. All collective agreements applied to Tehy sectors include the length-of-service bonus or a similar bonus paid based on work experience.

The amount of the bonus and the number of required work years vary by collective agreement.

In principle, work experience in the same field (e.g. health care) is eligible when calculating the length-of-service bonus.

Most collective agreements lay down provisions on personal bonuses. Personal bonuses are not paid based on the demanding nature of work tasks, but the performance of the employee. Personal bonuses may be based on additional training completed by the employee, which is not required for their assigments but does improve their performance, for example.

Employees must be treated equally when granting personal bonuses. In the municipal sector and wellbeing services counties, 1.3 per cent of the total sum of job-specific salaries must be reserved for personal bonuses.

Financial recruitment support is a bonus employed specifically in the public sector. It is granted in positions that are challenging to recruit for. The financial recruitment support may be granted for a fixed-term, if the term has been agreed in the employment contract.

Remote areas allowance and service increment are old wage components employed in the municipal sector. New remote areas allowances or service increments have not been granted since the 1990s. Some employees may have these components in their pay, because it was stipulated in the General Collective Agreement in the municipal sector (KVTES) at one time that these bonuses would not be removed from employees that receive them as long as the requirements are still met.

Employment advice at your side

As a member of Tehy, you are entitled to the services of the union representative at your workplace and our specialists. You will not have to navigate your pay slips, determine if you were let go lawfully or check the terms of your employment alone.

Case: Inaccuracies with wages

A physiotherapist had inaccuracies in their wages: additional holiday pay was missing, too few bonuses from night shifts had been paid, overtime and extra work bonuses had not been paid, and there were also inaccuracies with holiday pay.

Tehy helped the physiotherapist receive what they were due. The employer was ordered to pay the physiotherapist 3,500 euros with penalty interest.

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