Working Life Barometer in the Baltic Countries 2002 (pdf) - mol.fi

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There have been no significant changes in the incidence of secondary jobs.
Altogether, 15 % of the wage earners do another job in addition to their main
one. It is also possible to speak of the aforementioned normalisation trend in
the sense that the black economy would appear to have diminished considerably.
On the basis of this study, less unreported income is earned in Estonia
than in Latvia and Lithuania. Delays in salary payment are also clearly less
frequent in Estonia than in the other two Baltic countries. However, they have
not been completely eliminated from Estonia, either, because more than onetenth
of the working people (12 %) stated that a delay in their salary payment
had occurred during the year preceding the survey. In practice, however, long
delays have ceased: the salaries have been only a few weeks late at the most.
A normalisation trend can also be spoken of with regard to the number of
hours worked. Almost half of the working people (47 %) had worked 40 hours
in the week before the survey. This percentage is greater than in the previous
survey. At the same time, the proportion who had worked a very long week
(over 50 hours) had diminished. Also, relatively fewer were working less than
40 hours a week. More working people than before came within the sphere of
normal working hours. This is connected with a decrease both in black income
and in overtime, as the study took account of all the hours worked by the respondents
during the previous week. Although less overtime had been done, it
is important to note that only overtime paid in money had decreased. Overtime
that was not compensated at all, or was compensated by days off, was just as
common as earlier. In this regard, the trend is not unambiguously positive.
The percentage of permanent employment relationships agreed on in writing
has grown in relation to the total. There has been no change in the proportion
of fixed-term working relationships - it is still high (23 %), but lower than in
Latvia and Lithuania. The increased proportion of permanent employment under
written contract is due to the fact that illegitimate (orally agreed) working
relationships are rarer nowadays than earlier. Extra written agreements between
the employer and employee in addition to the work contract proper,
which allude to some irregularity, also occur less frequently now. These extra
agreements may stipulate fringe conditions that are either negative or positive
from the worker's point of view (for example, a ready-signed, undated notice
of dismissal, black income, etc.). In Estonia, in contrast to the other countries
under comparison, agreements of this kind have become rarer than before.