Departure passes | Matti Heikkinen’s job as top sports director ends: this is how much it costs with the “municipal leader’s meter”

Medalless The laundry after the Paris Olympics was cleaned up at the Olympic Committee with a big broom, which swept out such a top sports director Matti Heikkinen as the director of sports and competition programs Leena Paavolainen.

It is clear that the Olympic Committee will have to dig into its hole while the top management of the organization washes its face. You can only make guesses about the amount of money, because the amount of compensation depends on many things.

Former top skier Heikkinen was selected for the position in July 2022 and started his job at the beginning of September. Pesti was temporary, as the position of director of the elite sports unit is filled for four years at a time.

The sand in Heikkinen’s hourglass ran out after two years.

As a general rule, fixed-term employment contracts cannot be terminated. Emeritus Professor of Labor Law Seppo Koskinen points out that they can also agree on a termination condition.

“But I guess this was about demolition. It has been in the public eye that he had to leave immediately,” Koskinen estimates.

Olympic Committee told in its announcementthat “Heikkinen will not continue as top sports director” and that “Leena Paavolainen, director of sport and competition programs, will not continue working for the Olympic Committee”.

“It doesn’t say which way [työsuhteiden] decisions have been made. It’s hard to imagine a reason for demolition, for example, in connection with Paavolainen,” says Koskinen.

Paavolainen managed to work in a top sports unit for 12 years. According to the law, there must be a valid and compelling reason for terminating an employment relationship.

“I think that this person has performed his normal duties as well as he can,” says Koskinen.

“If you were to go to court, it would probably be difficult to find a basis that is sufficient from a legal point of view.”

It is possible that both Heikkinen and Paavolainen have had a management contract with a separately defined severance pay.

I will according to him, the Olympic Committee should have acted exactly like this, i.e. the organization should have concluded a management contract with both Heikkinen and Paavolainen.

“If it was done properly, then it should have been defined there, what will be the compensation in such a situation. And, of course, the management contract can always be challenged,” he says.

The severance pay is paid to the director “if, so to speak, trust has been lost”, as Koskinen expresses, and there is no reason for the dismissal that would remove the basis for paying the severance pay.

“There is hardly any personal reason in Heikkin that would justify the demolition, but it is this general lack of success,” Koskinen estimates.

Koskinen emphasizes that the evaluation is difficult because there is no information about the content of Heikkinen’s contract.

“I think he has a manager’s contract – he is the head of the unit after all. But in any case, the board supervises him, that even though the manager’s contract has been signed, he has nevertheless been in an employment relationship.”

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“There is hardly any personal reason in Heikkin that would justify the demolition, but it is this general lack of success.”

Severance pay is contractual, so its size varies. Koskinen says that the severance pay of municipal managers was on average 6–8 months’ salary.

“Sometimes it’s a little more, but on the municipal side, management contracts require that they be agreed upon [sopimuksen] termination and severance pay,” says Koskinen.

Heikkinen’s salary as sports boss will be known when the income tax information for the tax year 2023 becomes public at the beginning of November. However, guidelines can be drawn from his predecessor’s earnings.

Mika Lehtimäki your money as the director of a top sports unit, in his last full year in 2021, taxable income of 116,000 euros, of which the share of capital income was a good 1,500 euros.

If the monthly salary is rounded to the nearest ten tons, one would expect a severance payment of around 60,000–80,000 euros from Heikki, using the “municipal leader’s meter”. On the private side, there have been even higher severance payments in contracts.

“When public funds are injected into severance pay, it is of course required that discretion is used correctly. But in the private sector, there is no way to define that it should be a certain size,” says Koskinen.

Normal no severance pay is paid for terminating a fixed-term contract if the employer considers that it had grounds to terminate the contract. Of course, the matter can then proceed to be decided by the court.

“In a lawsuit, it can be done, and in general we probably try to make settlements, that a certain number of months are paid as compensation. But the law does not oblige anything if there was a right to demolish.”

If Heikkinen worked with a fixed-term contract instead of a manager’s contract, would not winning a medal at the Olympics justify the termination of the contract?

“If there had been an agreement on severance pay in a so-called trust crisis situation, because that’s what it’s usually about, even though the term is not necessarily used, then it can be dissolved exactly like this,” Koskinen replies.

It would then be about underperformance. A point of comparison can be found in the fixed-term employment contracts of hockey coaches, which can end in dismissals if the team’s results are worse than expected.

“In practice, it can also be that the fixed-term work is stopped, but the salary is paid for the entire rest of the time. then there will be no financial penalties for the employee, and the employee is often content with this.”