OAJ’s union is 1 per cent of the gross earnings subject to withholding tax.
The amount of the personal union fee varies, as each of OAJ’s regional, local, teacher and national associations decides on its own union fee each year. When you become a member of OAJ, you also join other associations.
The union fee includes:
- OAJ’s union fee
- regional and local association union fees
- the union fee of any teacher and national association
- the fee for the Unemployment Fund for Education and Science.
What income is the union fee paid from?
The union fee is calculated from your gross earnings subject to withholding tax from work in the education and research sector. Gross earnings include your basic salary or wages and all of the bonuses paid based on your employment contract. These bonuses include:
- work experience and years of service allowances
- cost-of-living allowances
- holiday bonus
- any taxable values of fringe benefits
- remote area allowance
- working-hours compensation
- annual leave compensation.
The union fee is not paid from:
- travel allowances or daily allowances
- retroactive salaries, such as retroactive salaries due to disputed termination or a non-recurring severance package paid in the event of termination
- association fees or meeting fees.
OAJ reports all union fees paid during the tax year directly to the tax authorities. The union fees are transferred to the Tax Administration in January on the due date determined by them. OAJ reports to the Tax Administration what the union fee situation is at that point.
Union fees for several jobs
Persons working as a teacher for more than one educational institution or as a part-time teacher are obliged to pay union fees for all of the teaching and research work carried out at the different schools.
Performing non-education related work while off work or on leave
If you are on leave or working holiday from your educational post and temporarily do other work than education work, your union fee will still be determined according to your educational work.
Your union fee cannot exceed the amount paid from the salary of your educational position or duties.
Update changes to your work situation in My Profile
Payment methods
There are two ways to pay the union fee. You can ask your employer to collect the union fee directly from your salary each month, or you can pay the union fee yourself.
When you join as a member or update your employment information in My Profile, you can choose whether you want the employer to deduct the membership fee directly from your salary.
OAJ will send an authorization to your payroll department for the deduction of membership fees. Please check your payslip to ensure that the deduction has started.
Please note that the automatic deduction of the membership fee may not always be activated immediately at the start of your employment. Be sure to verify the start of the deduction on your payslip.
If there are any gaps in the payment of your membership fees, you can calculate and pay the missing month's fee in My Profile. You can obtain the payment details using the membership fee calculator in the service.
If your membership ends and your employer has been deducting the membership fee directly from your salary, please contact your employer and request them to stop the deduction of the OAJ membership fee. Also, inform them of your resignation date.
Please note that the membership fee must also be paid for the month in which you resigned.
Not all employers deduct the membership fee directly from your salary. In such cases, you are responsible for paying the membership fee yourself.
You can change and select the payment method in My Profile. After making your selection, you will receive instructions and an invoice via email for the payment of the membership fee.
When you are responsible for paying the membership fees yourself, the membership fee invoice will be sent to the email address you provided. You can also check the payment details in the Messages section of My Profile.
Paying the union fee with Paytrail
When you pay your union fee with Paytrail, the information is saved on your bank statement or online bank. The recipient of the payment is Paytrail, and the payment is not visible in OAJ’s or SOOL’s membership services.
If you use OAJ’s union fee calculator to make a payment with Paytrail, the recipient of the payment will be correct.
If your payment has been sent incorrectly to Paytrail, proceed as follows:
- Contact Paytrail Customer Service and request a refund.
- Correct the account number for your payment information. It can be found e.g. from the Membership Fee messages or from the Messages on My Profile sent by OAJ or SOOL to you.
- Pay the membership fee with correct information.
Paytrail Customer Service (paytrail.com)
Union fee due date and payment
The due date for the union fee invoice shall always be the 25th day of the month. Please note that the payment reference number always remains the same.
If you notice that the union fee has been allocated to a previously paid month, please inform us of this using the enquiry form. In urgent matters, you can also call our membership services.
OAJ membership services contact details
Check the union fees collected from your salary
Many employers pay union fees that have been deducted from the employee’s salary to OAJ every 1–6 months. This may mean that some of the union fees won't be delivered to OAJ until later, at the start of the next year.
The membership services will carry out several correction runs during the spring, which will gradually clarify the union fee information received by the tax authorities.
You can correct the union fee information yourself by the due date specified by the tax authorities in the Tax Administration’s MyTax. Check the union fee amount collected from your salary on the last salary slip of the year. You can use the income register to check your salary information.
When the employer debt collection of union fees has started, it will appear as an entry on your payslip. Depending on the salary system, your payslip should show the entry: Ay fee, Ayj fee, Union fee, Diff. fee, OAJ fee, OAJ union fee (Ay-maksu, Ayj-maksu, Jäsenmaksu, JM maksu, OAJ maksu, OAJ jäsenmaksu) or other similar entry.
The entries Tvm (= Unemployment insurance contribution) or TyEL (= Earnings-related pension contribution) shown on the payslip do not refer to the trade union membership fee. You can see information about both the employer’s debt collections and the union fees paid by you in the union fees tab of My Profile. In My Profile, the union fees collected by the employer are always displayed with a delay. Therefore, it's best to first check your payslip to see if the union fee has been collected.
When the notification of a change in employment status has been processed in the membership services, the authorisation to collect union fees is submitted to the payroll administration of the employer you have listed. The employer collection of union fees is most likely to start with the salary payment of the month following the processing.
You can submit a notification in My Profile. It is advisable to report the change in good time.
No, it does not.
The notification is pending processing in the membership services and will be processed as soon as possible.
When the notification of a change in employment status has been processed in the membership services, the authorisation to collect union fees is submitted to the payroll administration of the employer you have listed. The employer collection of union fees is most likely to start with the salary payment of the month following the processing.
Example: The membership services processes your change in October and sends the collection authorisation to the payroll administration. The collection of the union fee is expected to start in November.
A change in the employment status may cause changes to the membership association information and thus to the union fee percentage. Therefore, reporting the change via the contact form may not be sufficient. Please submit a notification in My Profile.
The My Profile service includes a union fee calculator that allows you to create a monthly or periodic union fee invoice.
You should only use the union fee calculator once the employment change you have reported has been processed. Your member association and union fee percentage may change due to a change in employment status and the calculator will only provide correct payment information after the notification has been processed by the membership services.