Jari Lindström (BR), the Minister of Employment, has confirmed that the government is planning on proposing further measures to ensure job seekers are active in their efforts to find employment.
The Finnish government is planning on unveiling a draft bill by year-end that would oblige job seekers to apply actively for job openings, Jari Lindström (BR), the Minister of Employment, confirmed in an interview with Aamulehti on Friday.
“The plan is to present the draft bill to the Parliament in 2018. The timetable will naturally become clearer as we move forward with the process,” he told the newspaper.
The draft bill would oblige job seekers to send a minimum of one job application per week or risk facing a 60-day suspension of unemployment benefits. Job seekers who fail to send the requisite number of applications would have to resort to, for example, social assistance to secure their livelihood for the duration of the suspension.
The bill will be designed to supplement the much-criticised activation model for unemployment security, which stipulates that job seekers will lose 4.65 per cent of their unemployment benefits if they fail to satisfy a set of activity criteria.
Lindström on Friday refrained from commenting on the issue in more detail due to the fact that the bill is still being drafted at the Ministry of Employment and the Economy.
“The preparatory work is still ongoing when it comes to the contents [of the bill], and I can’t comment on an ongoing process. We’ve yet to set a fixed date when it comes to the timetable,” he said to Aamulehti.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT Photo: Jussi Nukari – Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi
