JHL (14.09.2015 - Heikki Jokinen) The situation in the labour market in Finland is now exceptionally tense. The Government announced plans to introduce legislation that will shorten annual leave, eliminate two bank holidays, make the first day of sick leave unpaid and cut extra pay for working overtime and on Sundays.
The ones who will pay the price for all this will be women working in the public sector, says Jarkko Eloranta, Chairperson of the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors JHL.
Annual leave will be shortened from 38 to 30 working days, if the Government get their way and this measure is passed in Parliament. “Some 60 - 70 per cent of those employed in municipalities and the state sector have holidays of more than 30 days”, Eloranta says.
The two scrapped bank holidays would be free days but unpaid.
Extra pay for working on Sunday would be limited to 75 per cent, down from 100 per cent. Overtime pay would be reduced to half, from 50 per cent to 25 per cent.
“All the measures the Government is planning will especially hit those working in the public sector on low incomes”, Eloranta says. Most of them are women.
JHL has a lot of members who work in the fields of health services and internal and external security, Eloranta stresses. “They cannot choose when they work.” The cuts in extra pay for working on Sundays and overtime will hit them hard.
Attack against freedom of agreement
Another thing that dismays the trade union movement is the fact that Government is limiting freedom of agreement by stipulating the maximum that can be agreed upon in certain areas of collective agreements.
This is totally unique in the context of Finnish society, and also unique internationally. The trade union confederations will study carefully whether the measures planned by the Government are constitutionally sound.
”This is an exceptionally hard blow against Finnish society which has for a long time been based on consensus. This strikes at the very heart of freedom of agreement”, says Jarkko Eloranta.
JHL is not the first union that is to speak about the possibility of taking industrial action, Eloranta says. “But the feedback from our members has been very clear.”
One of the consequences of the Government’s new plans is that JHL is now getting a lot of new members.
“On a normal day we get around one hundred new members. On 9 September (immediately after Government announced their plans) the number was double”, says JHL Head of Membership Services Unit, Pertti Paajanen.
Joint demonstration
All three trade union confederations are organising a joint demonstration against the Government’s plans to limit the freedom of agreement and against planned unilateral unfair cuts. The demonstration takes place on Friday 18 September at 11.00 at Helsinki Railway Station Square.