If the company is under financial pressure, your employer may try to preserve jobs by offering you and your colleagues a reduction in hours and pay, but in return you can keep your job.
However, you should be careful about saying yes, as it can have a major impact on your finances.
On this page you can read more about what you should be aware of if your employer offers a work sharing agreement.
You should be careful about agreeing to a work-sharing agreement, as it can have a major impact on your finances. However, work sharing is often an alternative to dismissal, so it is a difficult situation for both you and your employer to be in.
Before you agree to reduce your time and salary, you should always contact IDA's legal advisors and get individual advice for your situation.
Read more about what it means to reduce time and pay
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Your employer may try to reach an agreement that you and your colleagues will share the work tasks and reduce your working hours and salary. This may be relevant, for example, during a period when the employer is short of tasks or orders.
A work-sharing agreement is entered into for a limited period of time to mitigate the situation of a shortage of tasks or orders.
If the period of work-sharing is no more than 13 weeks, the company must report it to the job centre. If the period extends beyond the 13 weeks, it must be approved by the regional labour market council.
A condition for your employer to enter into an agreement on work-sharing is that the company enters into a collective agreement for all employees in the entire company or an entire company department.
During the period in which work-sharing has been agreed, the employer may not dismiss the covered employees due to a shortage of work. If this happens, the agreement will lapse, and the employees covered by the work-sharing will return to the pay and employment conditions they had before the agreement came into effect.
Working hours in case of work-sharing must either be reduced by:
If working hours are reduced by less than this, it is not possible to enter into an agreement on work-sharing.
Who enters into an agreement on work-sharing depends on whether there is a collective agreement in the company or not:
If there is a collective agreement that contains rules on the division of labour, the company can enter into an agreement with the local union or union representative. Once the agreement is entered into, it applies to everyone covered by the agreement, including employees who are not members of the union.
If there are several collective agreements in the company, the agreement on work-sharing must apply to all collective agreement areas in the company, company department or individual production unit.
If there is no collective agreement in the company, the agreement on work-sharing must be concluded directly with the employees and not with the trade union. It is a condition for the validity of the agreement that all employees in the company/company department or production unit accede to the agreement. If even one of the employees in the company in question does not want to accede to the agreement, the work-sharing cannot be established.
If the conditions for entering into a work-sharing agreement are met, you will be entitled to supplementary unemployment benefits for the time you do not perform work for the company.
The right to receive supplementary unemployment benefits begins from the first day of the work-sharing period and is conditional on you meeting the conditions for receiving unemployment benefits.
As a general rule, you can take holiday during the period in which an agreement has been made at the company regarding work distribution.
The holiday must be agreed with your employer and notified to the job centre 14 days before the start of the holiday period.
As part of a work-sharing agreement, the company must sign a release certificate so that employees can resign from their position in the company with one day's notice if they are offered other work with longer average weekly working hours.
It is a condition for receiving supplementary unemployment benefits that the individual employee is released from their regular notice period.