The Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (EKTK) wants to cut the national minimum paid vacation from 28 calendar to 20 working days, arguing the current system is unfair.
In a letter to Minister of the Economy and Industry Erkki Keldo (Reform), the chamber said the Employment Contracts Act set a national minimum of 28 calendar days of paid vacation – but noted that calculating leave in calendar rather than working days put some employees at a disadvantage.
EKTK director general Mait Palts explained that if one full-time worker took off 28 calendar days in a row, including weekends, they ended up with 20 days off work. Meanwhile, another who splits their vacation time – taking the required 14 consecutive days off but using the rest only on workdays – gets 24 days off work.
Changing the way annual paid vacation was calculated “would make it easier to ensure employees under the same employer receive an equal amount of vacation time,” Palts wrote to the minister, proposing that Estonia switch from 28 calendar days to 20 working days of annual vacation.
He noted that many EU countries already counted vacation time in working days – 20 in Lithuania, Latvia and Germany, and 24 in Finland.
The chamber also wants to scrap the rule requiring employees to take at least 14 consecutive calendar days off each year. Palts said this requirement didn’t reflect the realities of the labor market or the preferences of many workers.
“Employees themselves often don’t want such a long break, but employers are required to enforce it,” he said, adding that the rule could disrupt work schedules and prompt the need to hire temp workers, especially in manufacturing and service sectors where overlapping vacations were hard to manage.
He said the requirement also wasn’t part of the EU’s Working Time Directive, making Estonia’s regulation less flexible than the EU-level one. Instead, the chamber proposes letting employees and employers agree to shorter vacation periods – for example, a week at a time.
He said the requirement also wasn’t part of the EU Working Time Directive, making Estonia’s regulation less flexible. Instead, the chamber proposes letting employees and employers agree on shorter vacation periods – for example, a week, or five working days, at a time.
The EKTK also wants to loosen restrictions on fixed-term employment contracts, which can currently be used only for valid reasons.
Palts said that in project-based sectors such as manufacturing, IT, consulting, training and creative industries, open-ended contracts weren’t always economically reasonable.
“Employers have no guarantee of a steady workload,” he noted.
Because of this, companies often turn to authorization agreements (kasunduslepingud) or contracts for services (toovotulepingud), which curtail employees’ social protections. The chamber proposes allowing fixed-term employment contracts even without a stated reason.
It also wants to change the law so that fixed-term employment contracts don’t automatically become open-ended if extended more than once, saying the current rule limits flexibility and raises legal risks.
For probationary periods, the chamber suggests allowing employers to terminate an employment relationship if an employee is on sick leave for more than half of their trial period and cannot be adequately evaluated.
On overtime, the chamber believes employees should be able to choose between extra pay or time off, but not receive both.
Another issue, Palts said, was that current law required vacation pay to be paid before the employee’s vacation began unless agreed otherwise, which he called impractical. Employers, he said, preferred simpler payroll cycles, and employees preferred steady income, and the EKTK wanted to leave the timing of vacation pay to be left up to both parties.
Last week, Keldo submitted a bill of amendments to the Employment Contracts Act and the Alcohol Act to relevant institutions for comment. (ERR)