Labour

Key objectives of the Labour chapter of the Employers’ Manifesto

1. INCREASE LABOUR MARKET SUPPLY
2. ENABLING MORE FLEXIBLE WORKING ARRANGEMENTS
3. CREATING A HEALTHIER WORKING ENVIRONMENT

Reform Party

1. Best represented: inclusion of foreign workers, young people, people with reduced work capacity, pensioners and retired people, and others who have been underemployed. Promise to reduce the number of government employees by at least 4,000 in 4 years.
2. “We will make changes to the Employment Contracts Act and to taxation to support flexible working.” Allowing casual work during unemployment.
3. “We are enabling employers to make a greater contribution to workers ‘health. To do this, we are making the coverage of employees’ health costs more flexible by abolishing quarterly accounting. We are also considering the creation of an employer’s health insurance scheme, where the state would contribute to the same extent as it does for unemployment and pension insurance.” “We will modernise health and safety regulations.” Regrettably, we do not find support for our proposal to end the taxation of employers “reimbursement of workers” health costs.

Social Democratic Party

1. Young people, older people and people with reduced work capacity, foreign workers: “We will create the possibility for foreign skilled workers to apply for a work visa. We will create an opportunity for skilled workers to apply for a work visa.” “We will direct employers and employees to conclude a social agreement on the volume of foreign labour needed in the country and the wages paid to them.”
2. No, rather the title reflects a desire to reduce flexibility. In several places, they promise to interfere in the activities of the social partners, to support trade union objectives: insurance against accidents at work, extension of the right to strike.
3. Improving the quality of management, health and safety awareness. They also want to continue to tax employers “contribution to workers” health.

Estonia 200

1. “Anyone who wants to work and pay taxes here, and who respects our customs and culture, is welcome in Estonia. Through temporary work permits, we regulate the access of our companies to foreign labour, taking into account the employment and economic cycle of Estonian residents.”
2. Strongly in favour of digitalisation and flexibility: “We will update the Employment Contracts Act and health and safety rules to support flexible working, including teleworking and part-time work.”
3. Clearly inside, improving people’s health behaviour and optimising the hospital network. Inclusion of digital solutions, tax exemption for health services and private insurance.

Freedom Party

1. Not available from
2. They want to liberalise the labour market.
3. Not available from

Fatherland

1. No specific measures are identified to increase the absorption of existing labour reserves. Nor does it seek to address the problem of migrant labour. “We do not rule out migrant labour, but it must be a last resort to solve labour shortages, and it must include only highly qualified labour; [Isamaa] will maintain control over migration policy and will not increase the current migration quota, which is 0.01% of the Estonian population.”
2. Basically inside: “Our labour market needs to be flexible and our social system needs to motivate people to work. We consider it necessary to modernise labour legislation, social security and tax systems to take account of the new situation where people work in multiple jobs, participate in the sharing economy and run their own business at the same time as working.”
3. Rather absent, extension of the special health expenditure tax credit included.

EKRE

1. The plan to impose a [further] “strict limit on the import of foreign labour to encourage wage growth in Estonia” is clearly worsening the situation. We will exempt from the quota the temporary employment in Estonia of workers earning at least three times the average wage” Currently, workers from third countries with an average wage of at least twice the average wage, who are considered to be top specialists, are already exempt from the quota. A promise to abolish the minimum social tax for part-time work would slightly increase labour supply.
2. Retrieved from
3. Retrieved from

Greens

1. The problem will not be solved. Prefer “greater automation of the economy to the import of migrant labour.” The promise to forgive part of a student loan on the birth of a child, or if a graduate goes to work in the public sector, could also reduce labour supply.
2. “We are making the labour market more flexible. We will expand opportunities for flexible and part-time working and teleworking, also for people with special needs.”
3. A strong emphasis on health, but not in the context of the workplace.

Centre Party

1. Inclusion and retraining of older people, adult education and continuing training, foreign students. A social tax ceiling to increase talent attractiveness and a social tax floor to increase the inclusion of the underemployed.
   State support for wage pressure is promised. There is also a general increase in benefits of all kinds, e.g. for pensioners, parents, etc., which can reduce work motivation and employment.
2. Providing flexible work opportunities for the elderly, parents, including reducing the minimum social tax threshold. At the same time, the UCLG has signed a cooperation agreement as part of its electoral programme.
3. Health promotion in the form of a range of financial incentives included.

Summary

The biggest challenge for Estonia’s economic development is how to ensure continued economic development with a shrinking working-age population and how to raise the skills of the population so that prosperity can continue to grow with a smaller population.

The three main objectives of the Labour chapter of the Employers’ Manifesto are increasing labour supply, increasing flexibility in labour law and healthy industrial relations.

Labour issues are not entirely absent from any of the election programmes, but the impact of the programmes on labour supply and industrial relations varies widely. Talk of mass imports of cheap labour is trivial, but it is being cultivated by many political parties. No one has such a plan. It is also meaningless to talk about preferring local labour – of course everyone (including employers) prefers local people.

Increasing labour supply is addressed most comprehensively by the Reform Party and the Socialists, who will address measures to support the activity of all inactive groups, as well as the inclusion of foreign residents. The 200 Estonia programme is also pragmatic on foreign workers. The programme of the Centre Party does not deal with the involvement of foreign specialists. At the same time, the numerous subsidies, which are the most numerous in the Centre Party’s programme, may discourage activity on the labour market. The programmes of the Greens and the EPP contain more proposals to reduce labour supply.

Making labour law more flexible would also ease labour shortages. Measures to increase flexibility are clearly included in the programmes of the Reform Party and the Greens. Also explicitly mentioned in the Isamaa programme. The chapter on labour market flexibility in the Socialist programme would clearly reduce flexibility and worsen labour relations. In the Centre Party programme, there are measures both to make employment relations more flexible and to make them worse. Increasing the social benefits of the Centre Party and the Socialists could discourage motivation to work.

Occupational health and safety is most often addressed in the programmes of the Reform Party, the Estonian 200 and the Socialists, but the Socialists “plans run a greater risk of placing all the responsibility on the employer (occupational accident and illness insurance), which could have the opposite effect on workers” health behaviour.

All in all, it is positive that many political parties have paid attention to the supply of labour, as the most important resource and source of competitiveness for any country. Unfortunately, many parties do not realise that the labour supply is a major part of a country’s capacity and of everyone’s chances for a better life. Unwise decisions are sometimes sacrificed to vote-grabbing without offering meaningful alternatives.