Archive

JHL (16.09.2014 – Heikki Jokinen) JHL local chapters for those working for the City of Helsinki will take industrial action against the planned corporatisation of several public services by the city. This will stop trams and underground metro trains in Helsinki for one day on Tuesday 23 September 2014.

The goal of the stoppage is to show that city employees are opposed to the corporatisation of city services currently run by the municipal enterprise Palmia which takes care of city real estate services, catering services, cleaning services, security services and telephone and well-being services.

The plan was voted on in the City Group Division of the City Board earlier in September. Five Division members supported corporatisation and four for keeping Palmia as a municipal enterprise. The City Council will vote on the matter a day after the JHL action.

Helsinki (10.09.2014 – Heikki Jokinen) Finland’s national flag carrier Finnair has signed an agreement with the Norwegian crew management company OSM Aviation on outsourcing its cabin services.

The company will provide cabin services for wholly state owned Finnair’s routes to Hong Kong and Singapore - on the first phase, says the Finnair press release.

Finnair is planning to outsource cabin crews on 20 routes in the near future. OSM Aviation is going to recruit all new personnel from Hong Kong and Singapore. Salaries will be paid according to levels in these countries.

Helsinki (28.08.2014 - Heikki Jokinen) The long struggle for a language skills supplement for sales assistants is beginning to bear fruit. Seppälä, one of the major clothing shops, is to start paying the supplement, as stipulated in the collective agreement.

The decision is based on a ruling by the Labour Court. The case was raised by the Service Union United PAM on behalf of the sales assistants at Seppälä Lappeenranta stores.

In accordance with the collective agreement for the commercial sector shop assistants are entitled to a five per cent pay supplement when they use more than one language "almost daily" in the course of their normal daily customer service. This wording has been subject to dispute since it was agreed in 1975.

JHL (25.08.2012 - Heikki Jokinen) JHL chairperson Jarkko Eloranta is worried about the planned new cuts in state payments to the municipalities. This year the cuts amount to 1.1 billion euro. About a third of this, 362 million euro is from new cuts.

"The municipal economy has been shrinking during the whole government period", Eloranta says. "According to our surveys negotiations to cut personnel expenses have been held in one fifth of the municipalities."

Many municipalities have been looking to make savings by not employing new personnel to replace those who retire. Temporary lay-offs have been put into effect in 15 municipalities.

Helsinki (21.08.2014 - Heikki Jokinen) Labour market organisations are struggling to negotiate a reform of the pension system. The reform aims to ensure the sustainability of the earnings-related pension system for the future. It goes without saying that a substantially larger number of Finns will be retired on pension and will live longer than in the past.

The need for reform was agreed in the pact on employment and growth between the labour market organisations in October 2013. The reform should be ready at the political level during autumn 2014 and implemented at the beginning of 2017 at the latest. The Finnish Parliament will formalise the final legislation.

Helsinki (13.8.2014 - Heikki Jokinen) More than half of Finnish politicians believe that outsourcing makes it more difficult to get equal access to welfare services. This came out in a survey on opinions offered by politicians and political leaders.

A total of 55 per cent of those replied agreed that outsourcing would make it more difficult to get equal services. Equal accessibility will become better, replied 16 per cent. Outsourcing doesn't influence services at all, said 29 per cent.

Out of national level politicians those who most staunchly held to the weakening accessibility position were the Social Democrats (91 per cent) and members of the Left Alliance (83 per cent). The figure was also high among activists of the Finns Party (53 per cent) and the Green Party (50 per cent).

The trend has been the same for a long time; the number of sick leave has been diminishing since 2009. Then it was in average 18.6 days for each employee in municipal sector.

"The reason for sinking might be that municipalities are focusing on working ability together with occupational health", says Anne Mironen, Head of Bargaining of JHL.

Helsinki (08.08.2014 - Heikki Jokinen) Redundancies have mostly affected private sector workers during the beginning of this year. The reasons for this are due to diminishing exports and weaker purchasing power, says Matti Tukiainen, the director of employment and sustainable growth at SAK.

"A fall off in exports is followed by a knock on effect – a lessening of demand for private services. The prolonged economic recession has made people more cautious, which leads to less frequent use of restaurant, travel and beauty treatment services than before."

The statistics published by the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions SAK shows that during the first half year of 2014 a total of 54,300 employees were subject to mandatory consultation with regard to possible personnel cuts. The figure is some 5,500 more than last year.

Helsinki (31.07.2014 - Heikki Jokinen) The Government should promptly set up a strategic programme to employ IT-specialist recently made redundant, urges Akava chairperson Sture Fjäder. They could work to build and improve public sector e-services.

Akava is a trade union confederation of affiliates for highly educated people. Redundancies have hit the IT-sector hard in Finland in recent years, mainly due to the problems surrounding Nokia smart-phone sales.

In July the new Nokia mobile phone owner Microsoft announced it is to cut 1,100 jobs in Finland. Almost half of these will be in Oulu, where the Nokia research and development centre was located. This will now cease operations altogether.

JHL (30.07.2014 - Heikki Jokinen) The basic task of trade unions has always been to unite employees in certain sectors to work for joint goals.

"Strong unions do also influence decisions in society by keeping an eye on the interests of their members when decisions are being made", says Päivi Niemi-Laine, the Chief Executive Officer of JHL.

JHL negotiates and make agreements; it has at the present moment in time more than one hundred collective agreements. When problems arise members can turn to shop stewards, union regional offices and union specialists for help. Also, legal services are made available for the protection of members.