Labour Court restores level-2 grading for four social workers

Finland’s Labour Court has held that four social workers in Ylä-Savon SOTE’s mental-health and substance-abuse services should have remained at level 2 in the employer’s local job-demand assessment system from 1 May 2020. In its unanimous interim judgment TT 2026:31, the court found that moving their jobs to the lower-paid level 3 breached KVTESFinlex and created an unjustified pay difference between equally demanding jobsFinlex.

The dispute arose when the joint municipal authority revised its scoring thresholds and reassessed social-work roles in spring 2020. The four workers’ duties had not changed, new job descriptions had not been drawn up, and the assessment factors remained the same. Other social workers previously on level 2 stayed there, while the mental-health and substance-abuse roles received lower scores for responsibility and independent judgment.

Pay had increased in cash terms. After the increases on 1 May 2020 and 1 May 2021, the four workers’ task-specific monthly pay reached €3,100, compared with €2,915.87 before the reform. Remaining at level 2 would instead have brought it to €3,250. The court accepted that scoring thresholds could be updated where task-specific pay was not reduced, but that did not justify the particular reassessment and resulting pay gap.

The employer argued that the comparator roles involved more consequential official decisions or statements. The court found that statements in mental-health and substance-abuse services could likewise substantially affect clients’ lives. Independent judgment and responsibility were accentuated by challenging clients and work without a supervisor from the same profession. Working in a multidisciplinary team had not been shown to reduce responsibility for social-work decisions.

The assessment group’s unanimity, including employee representatives, did not settle the dispute. The workers had challenged the grading, and JUKO could form its final position during the dispute negotiations and bring proceedings. They transferred to Pohjois-Savo’s wellbeing services county on 1 January 2023.

The court upheld the declaratory claims; proceedings continue, and it deferred the question of legal costs. The sums listed in the claim are requests for payment, not monetary awards made by this interim judgment.

The legal basis is KVTES 2020–2021, Chapter II, section 9, and the equal-treatment rule in section 12 of the Act on Local Government and Wellbeing Services County Officials (laki kunnan ja hyvinvointialueen viranhaltijasta).