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Youth well represented in several union delegations
SAK, Tampere (06.06.2011) SAK's 18th Congress has opened at Tampere Hall. The affiliated unions, which make up the Confederation are represented by 270 delegates, coming from various regions of the country. One delegate lives as far north as Kilpisjärvi, in Northern Lapland, whereas 12 per cent of the delegates come from Helsinki. Three delegates have immigrant backgrounds. SAK's largest member organization the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors JHL has, with its 53 delegates, the largest delegation. The Service Union United PAM has 49 delegates and the Metalworkers' Union 36. Each one of the smallest unions has only one representative.

Shop steward Pentti Mäkinen expects thorough and full-going discussion on SAK's goals 
SAK, Tampere (06.06.2011) "I hope that participants will have a broad-based and thorough discussion on SAK's goals for the next few years. And following intense debate, serious decisions must be taken to tackle current problems affecting wage and salary earners." This is how Pentti Mäkinen, one of the most experienced delegates at the SAK 18th Congress, described his expectations on Monday morning when entering the Tampere Hall, the venue of the congress.

Helsinki (01.06.2011 - Juhani Artto) Statistics for the 2011 January-March quarterly period show that the real incomes of wage and salary earners were 1.0 per cent below the level for January-March 2010. It was back in July-September 2007 when quarterly statistics showed the last previous negative trend, but one has to go back to 1993 to find negative figures on an annual basis.

When trying to assess 2011 as a whole, current data available suggests negative growth in respect of the real value of wages and salaries. Collective agreements signed since August 2010 have meant lower pay rises when measured against inflation.

Helsinki (27.05.2011 - Juhani Artto) Akava, the union confederation that represents teachers and a broad spectrum of academic professionals elected a new President on Wednesday. He is Sture Fjäder, 53. He has been an Akava's board member since 1995 and has worked in different capacities for SEFE, The Finnish Association of Business School Graduates, since 1989. Recently, he was named as SEFE's Head of Policy Development.

Akava consists of 34 affiliated unions, totalling 550,000 rank and file members. Membership has more than doubled in last two decades.

Helsinki (23.05.2011 - Juhani Artto) The union confederation SAK is set to approve EUR1,800 per month as its next goal for minimum pay. This proposal is included in the draft action program 2011-2016 for the SAK Congress on June 6-8 in Tampere. The idea is to reach the goal by 2016.

For readers in low pay countries the goal may sound extravagant but when the high level of Finnish taxation, cost of living and prices for daily necessities is taken into consideration  EUR1,800 per month only offers a very basic standard of living, even for a single person.

Helsinki (17.05.2011 - Juhani Artto) Experts estimate that about 200,000 Finns have been exposed to asbestos. At least 10,000 of them have succumbed to asbestos-caused illnesses, and in recent years around one hundred have died annually as victims of asbestos exposure during their working lives. At this point in time the number of serious illnesses related to asbestos is approaching the top-most level. 

Most exposures took place in the 1960s and 1970s at construction sites, shipyards and power plants and in vehicle installation, repair and service jobs. At that time there was also an asbestos industry in Finland, with serious health risks.

JHL/Trunf - Helsinki (06.05.2011 - Heikki Jokinen, Juhani Artto) A fairly new item on the agenda of the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors JHL is safeguarding the interests of those who are self-employed.

But before delving deeper into this, we should note some basic facts concerning the situation of the self-employed in Finnish society today. Some 160,000 people earn their living as self-employed persons, which makes up seven per cent of the total labour force - far less than in many other EU member states. In the last two years the number of self-employed in Finland has grown by 20,000.

Helsinki (02.05.2011 - Juhani Artto) The representative of the Hungarian employment agency Èszak-Èke Kft has been engaged in usurpy-type work discrimination in Finland, the District Court of Pirkanmaa concluded in early April. The company had employed Hungarian employees to work in a metal working company in Parkano in Western Finland and paid them a monthly wage from EUR517 to EUR595. According to the collective agreement of the technology industry they should have been paid a monthly wage of about EUR1400. 

In addition, the employees were not paid the proper evening and night allowances. The company also paid less than what is required for work done on Sundays. The accused claimed to have paid the employees a EUR7 daily allowance per hour but the District Court rejected this claim.

Helsinki (24.04.2011 - Juhani Artto) The rise of the True Finns as a political force in the April 17 Parliamentary election is by far the greatest and most overwhelming change to affect the Finnish political scene in over 60 years. The True Finns gained an astonishing 34 new seats in the 200 seat parliament, bringing their total to 39 (they held 5 seats during the last parliament). All other parties lost seats except for the tiny party of Swedish-speaking Finns. The huge advances made by the True Finns almost certainly means that it will be part of the new government, as one of its major forces, and thus have real influence on the political decisions to be made in government and in Parliament.

What will it mean for working people and trade unions representing them?

Helsinki (24.04.2011 - Juhani Artto) Big changes characterise the April 17 Parliamentary elections in Finland, but - as in the previous Parliament - a clear majority of the MPs are rank and file members of trade unions. Over 120 of the 200 MPs have union affiliation.

Some 60 MPs are members in the unions that are affiliated members of the highly educated employees' confederation Akava. At least 39 MPs are rank and file members in unions of the union confederation SAK and 22 MPs in unions of the salaried employees' union confederation STTK. In addition, several journalists, organized in the independent Union of Journalists in Finland, were elected.

STTK (24.04.2011) Although the result of the Parliamentary election was a something of a surprise, Leila Kostiainen, the General Secretary of the STTK, believes that STTK will enjoy good cooperation with the next government.

"STTK always strives to have good cooperation with the government regardless what parties have formed it. And so it will be now also. We do not foresee any obstacles to this being the case." 

Kostiainen expects the inter-party negotiations to lead to a majority government that will be able, together with the labour market organizations, to push the economy forward.