Where will the working hours trial lead?

Text terhi hautamäki English translation Marko Saajanaho image getty images

In 2025, university collective agreement negotiations were stalled by the issue of maximum teaching hours. The employer side wanted to remove the cap, whereas the employees resisted.

Eventually, both sides accepted the National Conciliator’s suggestion, which did not change the collective agreement but a system with three options was introduced in the additional protocol.

The first option is to continue with no changes, as many universities have done. In-person teaching has maximum working hours which have been determined separately for professors, teaching-focused positions, and teaching positions without a research component.

The second option is a local agreement, the kind of which has been signed by the Universities of Helsinki, Turku, and Oulu.

Such an agreement was not signed by the University of Lapland or the Tampere University. They are heading towards the third option – a working hours trial in which the universities will trial a more flexible model, which in principle lasts two terms.

From maximum hours to percentages

The working hours trial does away with maximum teaching hours, which are replaced by percentual ranges. For teaching-focused positions, a maximum of 50–70 percent of total working hours can consist of teaching tasks. For professors, the percentage is 10–40 percent. For teaching positions without research, it is 70–90 percent of total working hours. Teaching tasks include various forms of teaching and advising regardless of the implementation, the related planning and afterwork, teachers’ joint teaching, field courses, laboratory teaching, lesson development, and developing and utilising new learning environments.

According to JUKO University Advisory Board Chair and Executive Director and Finnish Union of University Professors Executive Director Tarja Niemelä, the goals mentioned in the additional protocol are positive. The objective is to support quality teaching and research, gain a clearer and more flexible model, and increase well-being at work. The amount of teaching work is not supposed to be increased.

At the request of the employee side, an entry was added stating that should concerns arise over increased teaching workloads, the situation is handled locally between the parties without delay. However, the working hours trial has raised concerns among university staff. The trial is only going into effect at universities with unsuccessful local negotiations.

Stopped negotiations

At the Tampere University, negotiations failed in early February 2026. The employer stated that the conditions for an agreement were not met, which means the university is heading to the working hours trial.

In March, JUKO chief shop stewards and staff representatives Terhi Kaarakka, Sinikka Torkkola ja Mari Hatavara described the situation as difficult. According to them, the employer side very abruptly stated the negotiations were over.

The negotiations began in November 2025 and initially seemed to be progressing harmoniously. The major disagreement stemmed from the employee side’s desire for further guidelines on how much time should be used on teaching preparation and advisory work – hour ranges for master’s thesis advising or preparation for each teaching hour. The employer did not want this. Neither did they want specific work plan entries on the division of job tasks, only broader categorisation.

“The work plan cannot guide what we do if all it says is ‘700 hours for teaching’. You have to have some kind of record on how how much time you plan to use for MA thesis advisory work, receiving completed independent tasks and so forth”, Hatavara says.

Worries of a growing workload

In mid-March 2026, the situation was completely open. The additional protocol does not specify how the working hours trial should be implemented. The staff representatives are of the opinion that this must also be a mutual agreement, but the employer has not shown any interest in continuing negotiations as of this writing.

According to Kaarakka, Torkkola, and Hatavara, there is a major risk of teaching hours increasing despite the additional protocol stating this should not happen. When the in-person teaching cap is replaced by percentages, the university can theoretically require their employees to teach more than they currently do, and the time for that is taken from what should be used for preparation and afterwork.

“Staff is worried about how much they will have to teach in the future and how that can be done well. One big source of stress is potentially having to do your job poorly. If preparation is reduced, people will feel as though they are doing a poor job,” Kaarakka says.

Torkkola points out that university workers are extremely committed to their work, perhaps too committed. If the number of teaching hours increases, that requires them to stretch themselves even thinner.

“What will not happen is employees doing less preparation. Instead, they will do more unpaid overtime.”

Practices must not be overhauled

At the University of Turku, a local agreement was signed following negotiations initiated by the employer. Chief shop steward and Union of Research Professionals President Antti Pajala says that the agreement should not significantly change the workload and should mostly add flexibility. He hopes the units will be able to use the agreement in a responsible manner. In addition to percentual maximum teaching hours, the agreement includes research’s percentage of total working hours. No minimum, just maximum. For example, university teachers and lecturers use at most 70 percent of their working hours on teaching tasks. University teachers use 30 percent of their hours at maximum on research tasks, lecturers use 50 percent. These can be flexible if the employee is willing.

For example, the lecturers’ 70 percent has been calculated by taking the old in-person teaching cap and multiplying it by three, thus taking preparation and afterwork into account.

According to Pajala, it was surprising to find the rector’s instructions arriving as before even though the agreement was thought to make them obsolete.

Among staff, the agreement has not attracted particular attention. Teaching hours have been near the upper limits in a few units, but most units are not even close to the maximum. There is an understanding between them and the employer that the practices must not be overhauled.

“Perhaps the biggest contribution of the agreement is that people are actually making work plans now. In the past, they have been a bit sloppy about it. Now, the managers actually have to pay attention to how to balance the work”, Pajala says.

Pajala says the fundamental issue with university workers’ time management is working hours clearly exceeding their total working hours. Many conduct research in their free time if they want to have time for it.

“That fundamental problem is not solved by this local agreement either.”