Helsinki (04.02.2009 - Juhani Artto) This Monday the Council of Finnish Industrial Unions TP published an initiative that would facilitate a negotiated agreement, between all labour market organisations, to boost the competitiveness of companies and maintain purchasing power of wage and salary earners.
The agreement would create a peaceful atmosphere for the labour market in the difficult years ahead, TP argues. The agreement would also prevent the worst -case scenario from materialising- mass unemployment.
TP has invited the employer organisations of the industrial sectors and the service sector employer organisations, closely connected with the industry, to negotiations that will take place on 25 February. The goal of the meeting will be to establish whether it’s possible to find common ground in a process that would lead to such an agreement.
The agreement would stand for two or three years, TP's President Antti Rinne concretises. The agreement would bind labour market confederations, central employer associations and the public sector. It would cover about two million wage and salary earners. In effect, this would incorporate more than 90 per cent of the wage and salary earners.
Member unions of the Council have almost 750,000 rank and file members. Member unions of the Council are the Chemical Workers' Union, Metalworkers' Union, Paper Workers' Union, Wood and Allied Workers' Union, Construction Trade Union, Electrical Workers' Union, Food Workers' Union, Union of Salaried Employees TU, Association of Business School Graduates SEFE, Association of Graduate Engineers TEK, Union of Professional Engineers UIL, Graphical Workers' Union and Union of Machine Supervisors.