The Confederation of Trade Unions has sent proposals to the Minister of Finance Mart Võrklaeva to amend the Public Service Act, in which trade unions stress the importance of the right of officials to strike and the need for equal treatment of all employees, including civil servants, and the right to negotiate their working conditions with their employer.

 
According to Kaia Vase, head of the Estonian Trade Union Confederation (EAKL), trade unions cannot understand why employers' organisations have proposed to shorten the length of leave in the public sector to 28 days, when civil servants already have 35 days' leave today, and introducing this across the board would ensure equal treatment for contract workers in the public sector.
 
Kaia Vask also thinks that the reasoning in the draft that the 35-day leave is compensation for the strike ban is unclear. "Trade unions believe that all workers, including civil servants, should have the right to strike, which is one of the most effective means of defending their social and economic interests in the workplace," said Vask, highlighting the importance of strikes for civil servants and other workers. The right to strike is one of the fundamental rights of workers, and a blanket ban on it in the public sector is unjustified.
 
Trade unions are calling for fair treatment for all workers, including civil servants, and are concerned that the draft allows the Government of the Republic to impose the terms of employment contracts on the public authorities' workforce on its own, depriving workers of the opportunity to discuss and negotiate these terms with their employer beforehand. A trade union is an association formed by employees on a voluntary basis, whose purpose remains to ensure that the rights and interests of all public servants are protected and that employees have the opportunity to have a say in the setting of their own terms and conditions of employment by exercising all their legal rights.
 
Kalle Liivamägi, President of the Union of State and Local Government Employees' Trade Unions, said: "Today, public sector employees and civil servants do not have the right to wage bargaining at national level, including the possibility to conclude collective agreements. It is important to give them this, and account must also be taken of the requirement of the European Union's Adequate Minimum Wage Directive that Estonia must reach 80% coverage by collective agreements. There is a strong case for this because in EU countries where collective bargaining coverage is above 80 %, the minimum wage is high compared to the average wage and the share of low paid workers is low."
 
In the light of the above, the trade unions believe that the amendments to the Civil Service Act need to be amended to support the rights of all civil servants and employees in the public sector and to allow them to negotiate their working conditions with their employer. This is the only way to ensure fair and equal treatment for all workers in Estonia.