DECEMBER 2018 | MANE MANUFACTURING & ENGINEERING| 19
LOCATION
A quick Google and folklore will say the North Pole or Lapland. Lapland itself is split between Finnish and Swedish occupancy, with the Finnish site boasting higher tourism and putting a larger focus on Christmas so it would be of the assumption that it would be Finnish labour laws that would need to be abided to.
LAWS
Finland is a member of the European Union, and their currency is the Euro. Working off this, we are able to gage the workers in the workshop or ‘elves’ would not necessarily have to be Finnish as they could hire ‘elves’ from other countries in the European Union without having to worry too much about employment laws differing from country to country. This means in theory they could even hire British elves – for now.
From using the Euro, the workshop workers would be able to negotiate salaries, order machinery and work with other European countries using the Euro a lot easier than having to worry about fluctuating exchange rates.
Another advantage of being in the EU and using the Euro would be having to worry less about import and export of good and materials presumably needed for bringing materials and parts into the workshop as well as having them ready for dispatch on the 25th December.
Other key laws that would need to be abided by from Finland would be their ‘general applicable collective agreements’ where even if employers aren’t unionised, they can still be tried and fought against as if they were due to strict Finnish dismissal protection. Also a very strict data policy going even further in to the recently applied EU GDPR would remain in place.
Another benefit of being an EU country
is getting the chance to use the Intra-Corporate Transfers Act, allowing international companies to transfer their labour forces from non-EU countries to Finland or other EU countries with permits.
Depending on the amount of work that needs to be done, night-work would need to be undertaken, but in order to assign night work to an employee, they must have their work split into 2 or 3 shifts and can only work until 1am. Finland tend to limit the use of ‘zero hour’ contracts so getting these to be used would be tricky.
Sunday is seen as a day not to work, but law states work given on Sundays must be paid at double pay – which may or may not be is Father Christmas’ budget.
Finland has a population of 5.5 million, similar to that of neighbours Sweden and Denmark.