JHL (31.08.2015 - Heikki Jokinen) The Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors JHL is still ready to embrace measures to improve the prospects of Finnish services and products, says JHL Chairperson Jarkko Eloranta regarding negotiations on the so called social contract.
Back at the end of May Prime Minister Sipilä’s Government Programme set a target to improve Finnish economic competitiveness by reducing unit labour costs by at least five per cent.
To this end a tripartite process was embarked on by the Government, the employer associations and trade union confederations. The second round of these negotiations ended without a result in August.
”It is a pity that negotiations ended at such an early stage”, Eloranta says. ”Finland - we all - needs high quality services and products in order to succeed better than we are doing today, both in the domestic and international market.”
According to Eloranta the main problem was that Government wanted to tie negotiations to exact figures, to reduce unit labour costs by at least five per cent. At the same time public spending is being cut by billions of euros in order to reduce the ‘sustainability gap’ in public finances.
“The sustainability gap is an abstract concept, and its content is very controversial. Have we committed ourselves to some amount to reduce the sustainability gap, what exactly then have we committed ourselves to?”
The agenda outlined by the Government was too narrow, Eloranta believes. It did not include any renewal of working life and how to guarantee incomes and security in case of redundancies.
The main idea of the Government was to get Finns to work longer hours without any increase in pay.
“It would just have been a project to cut salaries and transfer income from employees to employers. It would not have been good for working people, the unemployed, the domestic market, and for Finnish society as a whole.”
The goals presented by the trade union movement would have been those which are needed by working life of today. These would have been supporting the quality of work, services and products, innovations and understanding the needs of customers, Eloranta says.
However, it is important to move quickly on from the disappointment caused by the failed agreement, Eloranta stresses.
The Government will now begin to make reforms with regard to working life. “I expect that the Government will continue to work on a tripartite basis and we’ll continue to do things together.”