Labor rights and privacy rulings in Sweden and Finland

In Sweden, the union Kommunal is criticizing employers for attempting to implement dual contracts for part-time employees. The union aims to prevent employers from using hourly contracts to bypass overtime costs. Following an EU Court ruling regarding equal treatment, part-time assistants in the healthcare sector will be entitled to overtime-equivalent compensation for extra hours worked starting October 1. Additionally, the union maintains that any shift changes with less than 48 hours' notice must be compensated as overtime.

In Finland, the Parliamentary Ombudsman has ruled that employers do not have the legal right to conduct PEth tests to measure an employee's alcohol consumption during their leisure time without explicit consent. The decision follows a case involving the Western Uusimaa welfare area, where a rescue worker was suspended after a test revealed high alcohol levels from recent weeks. The Ombudsman noted that because PEth tests reveal private behavior, they require specific legal grounds which currently do not exist in Finnish law.