Know your Rights

The Renewed Salary System for the Universities An Agreement to renew the salary system for the universities was reached September 27. 2018.

The agreement was not easy to reach and both parties needed to show flexibility in order to reach the result. The renewed salary system will come into effect January 1. 2019. Also, the whole 0,5% of the general salary raise will now be paid in full January 2019, of which 0,3% was dependent upon reaching the agreement on the renewal of the salary system.

There will be some changes in both the personal performance and the job requirement evaluation processes within the salary system. There will be specific seminars held to educate the shop stewards and the supervisors at the universities as soon as possible in cooperation with the employer and the employee parties.

Personal performance

The previous personal performance levels will be reduced to 4 and are called categories in the new system, both for the teaching and research staff and the other staff. Also the descriptions of the personal performance in the new categories have been renewed compared to the old level system. In the new system, the personal performance will be indicated in percentages, not specific levels with euro amounts. The lowest percentage for the personal performance rises from 0 to 6% and the highest from 46,3 to 50%.

The personal performance shall now be evaluated every 5 years instead of the previous evaluation cycle which took place every other year. However, the employee is entitled to ask for a new evaluation after two years since the previous evaluation. Also, the employee may ask for evaluation after 6 months from the beginning of their employment. In the future, there will be specific evaluation periods once or more times a year, and the most of the personal performance evaluations will be held during those specific evaluation periods. The evaluation periods may differ depending on the university in question. However, the supervisor may also evaluate an employee outside the evaluation periods if needed. Employees working under fixed-term contracts over six months, will be evaluated as soon as possible (after their contract alltogether exceeds 6 months), so that they will also receive their evaluation in due time regardless of the university’s evaluation periods.

Job requirement

When the employment relationship begins, the university must state whether they consider the job description a new one or one that has previously been evaluated. If the task has not been previously evaluated, it will be evaluated within 6 months since the beginning of the employment relationship. Also, whenever the task of the employee has either changed immediately or been altered throughout time so that the job requirement level no longer is accurate, the job requirement must also be evaluated again.

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