Archive

Fipsu (10.01.13 - Heikki Jokinen) The Finnish public service trade unions have added their voice to the Water is a human right -campaign. Its aim is to collect one million signatures for a European Citizens' Initiative to be put before the European Union. The initiative is a new mechanism designed to ensure a genuinely popular public proposal gets placed on the political agenda of the Union.

The campaign’s goal is to guarantee water and sanitation for Europe as a whole, and seeks to counter liberalisation and privatisation of water services and to advance the right to water as a global human right. The campaign is run and supported by many European organisations with strong trade union participation and backing.

Helsinki (09.01.2013 - Heikki Jokinen) The trade union confederations SAK and STTK have published their own programme for economic growth. "High salaries are not the reason for problems in the Finnish economy, there are other reasons behind it", is how SAK president Lauri Lyly views the situation.

Lyly and STTK president Mikko Mäenpää see the real problems afflicting the Finnish economy lie in the too low value of added production. The key sectors of our economy, namely the paper and electronics industry have concentrated far too much and for far too long in bulk products.

The solutions offered by the confederations are aimed at guaranteeing a high level of education, building and maintenance of a working infrastructure and supporting new innovations.

JHL (8.1.2013 - Heikki Jokinen) At the turn of the year JHL opened a special information exchange channel on their web pages for their members working in the municipal sector. It collects information on what kind of plans the municipalities have regarding the reorganising of their services. The idea is to involve union activists in gathering relevant and useful information, which can then be made available to other activists.

 "At the moment there is a lot happening in the municipalities and JHL wants to be able to influence decision making within these municipalities", says planning officer Leena Peltoniemi from the JHL office. The new information channel seeks to collect information on what happens and where. "The goal is to be able to influence municipal service production at as early a stage as possible."

Helsinki (04.01.2013 - Heikki Jokinen) Relations between trade unions and the employers' confederation are exceptionally tense at the moment in Finland. This friction between the two parties had already become evident in September. Then the board of the Confederation of Finnish Industries EK did not accept an agreement which its representatives had already negotiated with trade union confederations concerning legislation to guarantee employees three days professional education a year.

Within the EK clear opposition against the Director General of EK Mikko Pukkinen had grown towards the end of 2012. He was seen as being too soft and was blamed for both the rejected education agreement and the national level salary framework agreement 2011-2013. Many employers see the framework agreement as a wrong move - they prefer to decide salaries at union or preferably at company level.

Helsinki (29.12.2012 - Juhani Artto) The employer stronghold EK urges that the retirement age be raised but a large majority of citizens oppose EK's proposals on the matter in question. Once again this has been confirmed by the results of the opinion poll Yle published on Wednesday.

According to the poll, only 16 per cent of Finns support the idea of raising the lower limit of the retirement age. It is now 63 while the upper limit is 68. The trade unions are also opposed to proposals on raising the lower limit of the retirement age.

Helsinki (20.12.2012 - Juhani Artto) It still holds true - in general terms - that the better a person's education is, the better his or her chances are of being employed or finding a job. But this generalization has gradually lost much of its strength.

Prior to  the early 1990s depression in the Finnish economy, the unemployment rate of highly-educated people was extremely low, less than 1 per cent. During the depression it peaked at around 7 per cent and then came down to about 4-5 per cent where it has remained since 1999.

Helsinki (17.12.2012 – Juhani Artto) In the 2000s, the debate on the role of public services in social and health care has been continuous. During the months preceding the municipal elections, held at the end of October, this issue was at the fore of public debate.

Those who favour outsourcing have proceeded gradually but in recent years there has also been numerous instances of a reversal of this policy. In 2010 less than a quarter of all social and health care services were provided by private providers.

Helsinki (14.12.2012 – Juhani Artto) In Mexico several Finnish-based companies are failing to respect the right of their employees to organize. This was exposed in a report published by the Finnish watchdog Finnwatch on Tuesday.

The companies breaching employees’ rights are Huhtamäki, Kone, Luvata and Metso. The report does not include data from Nokia’s and Savcor’s factories in Mexico as these companies declined to respond to Finnwatch’s questionnaire.

Helsinki (07.12.2012 - Juhani Artto) Finland's exports have weakened in the 2000s, and last year the current account balance slipped into negative figures for the first time in many years. Employer representatives claim that the problems in exports are due to weakened price competitiveness of the industrial sector. But this is not true, comments Jorma Antila, the director of the research unit at the Metalworkers' Union.

He refers to statistics that offer no hard facts in support of the employers' claims. The price competitiveness of the industrial sector has remained fairly stable throughout the 2000s, Antila reminds us in his column in Ahjo, the magazine of the Metalworkers' Union.

Helsinki (05.12.2012 - Juhani Artto) In the second quarter 2012 the average wages for female workers in Finnish industry were 85.2 per cent of average wages for male workers. In the last two years the gap has slightly narrowed and is now marginally narrower than in the fourth quarter 2006. In the second quarter 2002 the corresponding figure was 80.5 per cent.