North Savo seeks legal costs from lawyer in nurse dismissal case
Monday 24th August 2026 on 12:15 in
Finland
Two foreign nurses are taking North Savo Wellbeing Services County to court over alleged unlawful dismissals, while the county is also seeking compensation from their lawyer, Yle reports.
The nurses are each demanding about 8,450 euros, equivalent to three months’ salary, as well as 1,000 euros in compensation under Finland’s Non-Discrimination Act.
A preparatory hearing will be held at the North Savo District Court on Tuesday. The nurses say their employment contracts were terminated on discriminatory or otherwise improper grounds. After their contracts were ended, both were offered fixed-term positions as practical nurses.
North Savo Wellbeing Services County disputes the claims. It says the contracts were lawfully terminated during the probationary period because the nurses’ professional skills and language skills were insufficient.
According to the county, inadequate language and professional skills can justify ending a contract during probation if the employee’s language skills are not sufficient for licensing and legally practising as a nurse.
The nurses would agree to court-assisted mediation, but the county has rejected that option.
The county argues that the nurses caused unnecessary legal proceedings because it was not given an opportunity to mediate before the case went to court. It is demanding that the nurses and their lawyer be held jointly liable for the costs caused by the dispute.
The county says the lawyer filed an “obviously unfounded action” and did not allow time for mediation before the proceedings began.
North Savo Wellbeing Services County recruited 10 nurses and two doctors through an international recruitment project in 2024. The staff worked on hospital wards in Iisalmi, Varkaus and Kuopio.
The county ended their employment during the probationary period in June 2025, citing shortcomings in language and professional skills. Nurses who challenged the terminations say the decisions were not made individually and that the hearing documents and termination notices were substantively identical.
The dismissed foreign workers challenged the terminations in autumn 2025. Ten of them withdrew their claims in June.