This is the first part of our
series of articles on the questions frequently asked of us. Although we have
also compiled these questions on our website, we felt it would be useful to
provide information on topical recurring questions in small sets of a few
questions at a time. The following questions have been particularly common in
our member services since the summer.

1.      Why does the
front page of Openetti say that the Incomes Register’s earnings payment data is
missing?

The Incomes
Register data will only be updated in our system based on your electronically
received application. If you have not yet submitted your application, there is
no need to worry about the missing earnings payment data. If you submit your
application by post, the request to the Incomes Register will be made manually
when your application is processed.

2.      How do I pay
my membership fee?

The
membership fee for the unemployment fund may be included in your union dues. If
you are a member of the Teachers’ Unemployment Fund through your union, for
example OAJ, the membership fee for the fund is included in the union dues.
Since the Teachers’ Unemployment Fund and the trade union are separate actors,
you should contact your union’s member registry in matters related to the
membership fee. You can contact the OAJ member registry, for example, either by
phone (0800 418 401) or by using the electronic contact form on the OAJ website
(www.oaj.fi). As the online member services of the fund and trade union are
separate, we cannot forward messages to the member registry.

You can also
belong to the unemployment fund as an individual member. In that case, we will
invoice the fund membership fee from you directly. The unemployment fund sends
the invoice for the membership fee to individual members once a year in the
spring. If you are an individual member, we can help you with questions
concerning membership fees.

3.      Why aren’t
the days paid of my earnings-related allowance displayed correctly in Openetti?

The
coronavirus situation has introduced several temporary amendments to the Act on
Unemployment Security. One of the amendments concerns the accumulation of the
maximum payment period. Due to the temporary legislative amendment, the maximum
payment period for earnings-related allowance is not spent for anyone
unemployed between 1 July and 31 December 2020. This
means that the days paid have been frozen to reflect the situation on 30 June
2020. The days paid will be added to the maximum payment period counter
again from 1 January 2021. You can find more information about the temporary
legislative amendments in the news and articles on our website – here, for example.

4.      Why does the
decision say that I have been working part-time when I have not been working at
all?

At the
beginning of April 2019, adjustment became payment-based. This means that, as a
general rule, income from part-time work now affects the unemployment benefit
in the period when the wages are paid.

Payment-based
adjustment is used for part-time work, for full-time work lasting up to two
weeks, and for lay-offs that have been implemented by shortening daily working
hours. Situations in which a person has been laid off on a shortened working
week will continue to be adjusted earnings-based.

Even if you
have not actually been working part-time during the application period, your
payday was during this period. Therefore, the income paid has affected your
earnings-related allowance in this period.

The wording
“You have been working part-time” in the decision does not therefore refer to
employment during the benefit period to which the decision applies. This
wording has caused a good deal of confusion, and we have communicated this to
the entity that draws up the decision texts. The texts of the decision are the
same for all unemployment funds in Finland. You can read more about the impact of income on earnings-related allowance here.

5.      Why isn’t my
earnings-related allowance based on my income immediately before becoming
unemployed, even though I earned considerably more now than in the previous
year?

The amount
of daily allowance is not re-determined even if the employment condition is fulfilled
if the first payment date after you re-fulfil the employment condition is
within one year from the last time that your earnings-related allowance was
determined. The last time, your first benefit payment date was 3 June 2019, and
your daily allowance was determined at that time. This time, your first payment
date was 1 June 2020, i.e. within one year from the previous payment.

This is a matter regulated by
law and, unfortunately, the fund is not allowed any discretion or flexibility
in this respect. Act on Unemployment Security, chapter 6, section 8: “However,
the salary on which the daily allowance is based shall not be recalculated if
the maximum period of the daily allowance based on the recalculated salary
would start within one year from the beginning of the previous maximum payment
period and if the salary on which the person’s daily allowance is based was
calculated at the beginning of the maximum payment period of the previous daily
allowance.”

For more information on the
topic, please see Amount of earnings-related allowance on our website.