OAJ’s long-term goal has been to make the teaching obligations of municipalities and the private education sector congruent. In the private education sector, the teaching obligation has been half an hour per weekly lesson per year higher than in the municipal sector. In connection with last spring’s salary increase negotiations, a working group was agreed upon with the aim of equalizing teaching obligations.
– This is truly a significant solution, and a lot of work has been done for a long time. The change required concessions both from the employee and employer sides, says Pasi Repo, Chief of Negotiations.
In addition, it was agreed in the negotiations that overtime pay will remain unchanged. It was also agreed that the teacher’s joint planning time could be increased by 8 hours. The content of the joint planning time will remain unchanged. The cost impact of this change was calculated and taken into account in the salary increases.
Depending on the employer’s previous salary review method, the salary of a teacher in teaching obligation working time will be increased by either 2.62 or 1.87 percent. The 2.62 percent salary increase requires that the temporary 0.75 percent increase is removed from the payment as of 1 August 2026. There are also teaching staff in the private education sector who are not subject to the teaching obligation. Their salaries will be increased by a general increase of 2.9 percent.
– Reducing the teaching obligations of all general education teacher groups is an expensive operation that requires the use of significant amount of contractual resources. Since the share of local instalments in the salary increases agreed last spring was larger than usual, we had the opportunity to tie the instalments to the development of national employment terms and conditions. Negotiations with Sivista (FEE) proceeded exceptionally unanimously and creatively towards a common solution, continues Pasi Repo.
The contract changes will enter into force on 1 August 2026. The OAJ’s working life guide (Työelämäopas) will be updated with more detailed content of the agreement after the turn of the year.
