Grounds for and types of temporary layoff

Grounds for temporary layoff

Laying off means that an employer reduces an employee’s working hours and pay, but the employment relationship is not terminated. A temporary layoff may only be imposed for financial or production-related reasons, or because of a temporary diminishing in the employer’s potential for offering work.

An employee in a private employment relationship or a public-service employment relationship may be temporarily laid off by the employer. A managing director, on the other hand, cannot be temporarily laid off. An employee in a fixed-term employment relationship may only be temporarily laid off if that employee is substituting for another employee who may be temporarily laid off. Public-service employees, on the other hand, may also be temporarily laid off even if their public-service employment relationship is for a fixed term.

Full-time temporary layoff

Your temporary layoff is a full-time temporary layoff if you have no working hours at all during the entire calendar week. In this case, the daily allowance will be paid in full for each temporary layoff day, with the same restrictions as for an unemployed person.

If your temporary layoff does not last a full calendar week, or if it lasts a week but spans 2 calendar weeks (e.g. from Wednesday to Tuesday), it is not a full-time temporary layoff. In this case, it is a temporary layoff with shortened weekly working hours.

Shortened weekly working hours

If your weekly working hours have been shortened by one or more full working days per week, you may be paid a full daily allowance for any layoff days. For days when you are at work or when you are paid a full working day’s wages, no daily allowance will be paid.

Shortened daily working hours

If your daily working hours are shortened due to layoff, you have been laid off with shortened daily working hours. In this case, the daily allowance is paid out adjusted and income is taken into consideration in the adjustment, depending on when the salary has been paid.

Hybrid layoff

An adjusted daily allowance will be paid if you are laid off both by shortening your daily working hours and by laying you off for full days during the same calendar week. In this case, whether the income from your work days is determined by the time of the work or by the date of the salary payment depends on how the layoff was originally carried out. We will investigate the situation when your application and its attachments have been submitted to us.