Ministry seeks law change requiring employers to guarantee EDF reservists' wages

The Ministry of Defense plans to introduce a legal obligation requiring all employers to maintain Estonian Defense Force (EDF) reservists' average wage when they are attending training exercises.
Despite the state's efforts to persuade them to do otherwise, around a third of Estonian employers do not pay salaries to reservists during military training periods, including in cases where the reservist has been called up for mandatory service.
Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur (Reform) told ERR: "We have discussed this idea with the Employers' Confederation and the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, but we have not yet reached the stage of drafting a bill."
"A third of employers in Estonia do not guarantee the maintenance of reservists' wages during training exercises. It would naturally be preferable if this didn't have to be enforced by law, and all employers simply paid," Pevkur went on.
"The number of paying employers has increased slightly each year, but we still need to decide whether to regulate this by law," the minister added.
Pevkur also pointed out that there is little difference between an employee attending other military training, for which an employer must pay up to 20 days, and attending training as a reservist. "It is essentially the same activity," he said.
The Ministry of Defense has said it aims to decide within the first quarter of this year whether to seek a legislative amendment from the Riigikogu.
Under current law, the state provides compensation for time spent at training assemblies, at rank, NCO, and officer levels.
Travel expenses to and from the assembly site are also reimbursed to reservists, within a set limit.
However, employers have no obligation to maintain salaries; financial losses are one of the reasons some reservists give for not attending training.
EDF reservists are generally former conscripts who have completed training and remain on reserve lists, as distinct from members of the volunteer Defense League (Kaitseliit).
The state is appealing to Estonian firms, though many employers in Estonia are foreign-owned.
The major training exercises held each year include Okas ("Quill"), Siil ("Hedgehog"), and Kevadtorm ("Spring Storm").
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Editor: Andrew Whyte