Trade Union News from Finland
Tekijä (15.01.2025 - Heikki Jokinen) From the beginning of 2025, the municipalities will take care of employment and economic development services. Up until now this has been the responsibility of TE offices, run by the state.
There will be 45 employment areas which will, for the large part, serve several municipalities. Only the local authorities of Lahti, Kouvola, Helsinki and Vantaa will organise this service themselves.
From the point of view of public administration, this is a major change. For the unemployed job-seeker, the reform should not bring any change to vital services.
Tekijä (15.01.2025 - Heikki Jokinen) The state will provide more money to the municipalities for their new employment undertakings. The amount of support will be calculated on the basis of the number of working-age people and unemployed in the municipality in question.
However, the amount to be paid for integration training will be based on the number of people with mother tongues other than the national languages.
As the payment of unemployment benefits is to be transferred to the municipalities, the latter will receive compensation from the state.
Tekijä (11.12.2024 - Heikki Jokinen) Collective bargaining for the technology industry has been going on since September. With no real progress. For this reason, the Industrial Union issued in November the first strike warning for one day strikes in some companies in December.
- It has become clear that we can get no further by negotiating, the Industrial Union president Riku Aalto says, explaining the reason behind the strike warning.
Aalto points out that the strike warning is not only down to disagreement on the pay rise issue.
Tekijä (11.12.2024 - Heikki Jokinen) The Industrial Union seeks a 10 per cent pay rise over the next two years. In the first year, the pay rise would be 6 per cent, in the second 4 per cent. To guarantee a real pay rise for the lower income earners, too, all wages and salaries should be raised in the first year by at least 150 euro per month, and at least 100 euro in the second year.
This is the common goal of member unions of the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK). The unions went public with such demands in November. SAK unions will be negotiating their collective agreements throughout the autumn and winter.
- Employees' purchasing power has been decreasing dramatically. The reason for this is the rapid and considerable rise in prices. Now, people get less with their pay than before. To correct this, we need a bigger pay rise than before, says Riku Aalto, president of the Industrial Union.
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