JHL (26.06.2014 - Heikki Jokinen) The Arts Promotion Centre Finland faces drastic cuts to its budget. This all began in early June when the statutory employee co-operation negotiations with regard to possible personnel redundancies came up for review. The aim is to achieve an annual savings of 420,000 euros in operating costs as of 2015.
This would lead to the redundancy of every sixth employee at the Centre, say JHL, JUKO and Pardia, which are the main trade unions in charge of state collective bargaining. The Centre has now 51 full-time employees.
The unions are keen to remind us that the former Arts Council of Finland was reorganised last year as a new Arts Promotion Centre Finland and that its work has had a very positive impact. The Centre also employed six new persons last year.
Now the state employer seeks to pull the rug from this positive venture. This kind of employers gyrating and unplanned action is heavy for both the staff and the work of the Centre, the unions say.
The Arts Promotion Centre Finland currently has offices in 13 locations throughout Finland. It might be that some of these must be merged with other regional offices.
The unions believe that these cuts will make the work of regional artists and various regional arts councils more difficult. Regional services would clearly suffer from these cuts and emerge substantially weaker.
The Arts Promotion Centre Finland is a government expert agency. Each year it distributes over 30 million euros in grants to artists and subsidies to art communities. The centre processes up to 14,000 applications per year.
In addition, the centre has 42 regional artists on fixed-term employment contracts financed by lottery and betting funds.
The operating budget for the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and its predecessor the Arts Council of Finland has already been cut by over 17 percent in the past five years.
JHL, JUKO and Pardia reiterate firmly that last autumn the unions accepted a very moderate national agreement on wages and salaries whereby parties engaged to work for employment. The state should take care of employment by its own example.