In the renewal of the Contractor's Liability Act, the construction industry will adhere to the duty of contractors to monitor that the accident and pension insurances of foreign employees are in order. In its plenary session on March 5, the Parliament approved the proposal to amend the Subscriber Liability Act in accordance with the report of the Working Life and Equality Committee. The construction industry RT is satisfied that the parliament ended up maintaining the procedure that the construction industry finds important.
In the original government proposal, the responsibility for the certificates of the sent workers would have remained solely with the foreign employer. The penalty for fulfilling the obligation would have been a fine, which is practically impossible to collect from a foreigner.
"Limiting the customer's supervision obligation only to the moment of signing the contract would have given an unreasonable competitive advantage to foreign companies that neglect accident and pension insurance. We didn't want to open a loophole for operators of the gray economy, even without a real risk of getting caught", Rakennusteollisuus RT's labor market director Tapio Kari says.
Rakennusteollisuus RT thanks the committee because it took into account the concerns of construction industry operators when considering the bill and deviated in its report from the government's proposal regarding the construction industry. In other industries, they settled for a fine instead.
The tax debt register is a good idea, but the implementation is lame
Construction industry RT finds it regrettable that the updated Customer Liability Act allows a contract to be concluded with a company that has a tax debt of up to ten thousand euros. In the past, you always had to make a payment plan with the Tax Administration for the tax debt. According to Tapio Kari, this is not the right message for corporate life.
"The public tax debt register is a good thing, but the ten-ton limit is bad. The current practice has effectively guided companies that owe taxes to agree on a payment plan with the taxman. The changes being implemented now lead to the fact that the subcontractor does not have to take any measures yet due to smaller tax liabilities. In other words, the old working practice is replaced by a new, looser one", Tapio Kari laments.
The amendment process of the Subscriber Liability Act stumbled
The changes to the Contractor's Liability Act started to go wrong in terms of the construction industry right from the start. Representatives of the industry were not invited to the working group considering the reform of the law, even though almost two thirds of the customer liability inspections carried out by the Regional Administration Office of Southern Finland, which oversees the law, are aimed at the construction industry. After all, industry players were heard at the hearings, although in Tapio Kari's opinion they were not listened to.
"The players in the industry have been rooting out the gray economy for a long time, and we also remained unanimous during the proceedings. Fortunately, the worst mistake was still prevented with chalk lines. The shortcomings of the tax debt register may have to be revisited in the next term of office", says Tapio Kari.
The views of the construction industry are shared by the trade association Rakennusliitto and RAKLI, which represents builders. The Southern Finland Regional Administration also strongly criticized the changes proposed by the government during the legislative process.