Minister established on June 16 that the amendments to the Working Environment Act notification rules and working rules shall enter into force on 1 July this year.
Changes in working time rules
The changes give the possibility to work between the hours of 9 and 11 at night.
It is only employees who can take the initiative for such a scheme, and it requires a written agreement between employer and employee. The employer must agree that some of the work be postponed until the evening, and at the same time, should not ask the employee to work more or sleep less.
The work done by 9pm must be within the daily working hours. Work in excess of agreed working hours will continue to be overtime. The rules for what is considered night work does not change.
Changes to the notification rules
Four changes will strengthen the protection of whistleblowers:
- Businesses with five or more employees must prepare notification – notification procedures shall apply how alerts and alarms should be maintained in the organization. The legislative amendments introduced at the same time for certain minimum requirements for the content of such notification.
- Hired workers receive expanded alerts protection – contract workers will now have the same right to report the same protection against retaliation as hiring business’s own employees.
- The authorities should have a duty of confidentiality about who has notified them – it is always legal to notify the supervisory authorities and other public authorities. From July 1, introduced an expanded confidentiality that will make it clearer that the whistleblower’s identity can be kept secret by the authorities. This will make it safer to notify authorities.
- The rules on notification are collected in a new chapter 2A Working Environment Act