Tekijä (15.05.2024 - Heikki Jokinen) The planned changes in the local bargaining legislation will distort competition. In the worst case scenario, pay might drop by even tens of thousands of euros a year.
Foreign employers active in Finland could take advantage of the new legislation. In these companies, employees are usually not organised in the Industrial Union, and there might be high turnovers in staff also. Among such employees, knowledge of the Finnish legislation and collective agreements is probably pretty limited, too.
Kari Lähteenmäki, the technology sector chief of collective bargaining, calculated for Tekijä some examples were a foreign company to take full advantage of the local bargaining included in the collective agreement.
It is not possible to go below the lowest pay, 10.52 euro per hour. But, by changing rules concerning the pay scale, working hours and holiday compensation there is room for major cuts. In more demanding jobs, the pay cut under a lousy local agreement could go, step by step, up to 41 per cent. With this pay, the foreign companies could easily win bidding competitions against domestic companies.