Unemployment security tasks to stay centralised in TE offices

Unemployment security tasks, for the time being, will remain centralised in the employment and economic development offices (TE offices), said the economic affairs and employment ministry in a press release on Monday.

According to the release, the ministry has explored the opportunities of transferring tasks related to the implementation of unemployment security and alternation of leave schemes from the TE administration to the social insurance institution Kela and unemployment funds. But, the preparation process has revealed that the transfer of tasks would result in a significant increase in costs.

For this reason and because of the upcoming local government trials, preparations will continue by centralising unemployment security tasks in the TE administration.

This centralisation of tasks would balance the workload between different TE offices, which, in turn, would harmonise the unemployment security-related processing times and the application of an upcoming legislative reform.

If unemployment security tasks remains centralised in the TE administration, this would, in practice, require placing these tasks in an unemployment security unit that would operate in conjunction with one of the TE offices, separately from customer services.

The operations of this unit could be organised in such a way that the personnel could continue to work in their current locations.

The economic affairs and employment ministry is also making preparations for local government trials on employment.

The trials would involve transferring a significant part of the TE offices’ customers, resources and powers to the participating municipalities. While the trials are under way, the ministry will prepare a proposal for organising TE services after the trial period, which will end in 2023.

In connection with the preparations for centralising unemployment security tasks, an assessment will be made on the division of powers between the TE offices and the municipalities participating in the local government trials.

The results of local government trials can be taken into consideration in due course in the development work on the implementation of the unemployment security system. The upcoming social security reform may affect the implementation development needs.

The government proposal on centralising unemployment security tasks may be submitted to parliament in autumn 2020 at the earliest. The date of entry of the legislation into force will be decided later.