Archive

Helsinki (18.05.2010 - Juhani Artto) Timo Nyberg, the CEO of Sevirita Oy, and his Chinese wife are accused of charging huge recruitment fees from almost 60 Chinese cleaners who moved to Finland some time ago for work. The couple are also being charged with collecting fees for language training the cleaners did not receive.

A district court in Helsinki will hear the case in the coming autumn. If the accused are found guilty, they will have to pay hefty compensation to the Chinese cleaners. And compensation, in this case, could amount to several hundreds of thousands of euros. The lawyer for the cleaners has asked the court to order the confiscation of property belonging to the accused to the tune of over EUR700,000.

Helsinki (13.05.2010 - Juhani Artto) SAK, the largest union confederation in Finland, is encouraging its employees to avail of the opportunity to employ social media in their work. "Participation (in social media) is desirable but not obligatory", the SAK guidelines outline.

Employees may decide themselves on participation and on their own net identity. When commenting on issues, related to one's tasks at SAK, the individual has to use his or her own name and treat other discussion participants respectfully.

"Be active, open-minded and polite. Listen and try to understand other people."

Helsinki (03.05.2010 - Juhani Artto) A year ago police were called to intervene in the beating of a Vietnamese worker in the sleepy small town Uusikaarlepyy at Ostrobothnia. It was the beginning of a process that has exposed what has been described as "exceptionally brutal exploitation" in Intiim magazine’s editorial. 

The exploiter in this instance has been a subcontractor for a plastic company, and it was the subcontractor' sons who assaulted the Vietnamese worker.

According to the latest issue of Intiim, the magazine of the trade union TEAM, police soon found out that the subcontractor was in several other respects a rotten employer. In practise, male employees earned no more than EUR800 monthly and female employees only EUR500.

Helsinki (25.04.2010 - Juhani Artto) Tens of thousands of employees have lost their jobs since the beginning of the recession in autumn 2008. In the technology industry alone, the number of employees fell by 10 per cent in 2009 i.e. by 24,000 persons. 

And the technology industry is a case in point. The chances of keeping one's job, for certain kind of people, have been far from good. This is the outcome of the mini study recently published by Ahjo, the magazine of the Metalworkers' union.

The study, made by Markku Tasala, a journalist, is based on interviews with eight shop stewards working in the technology industry. And it concerns work places where, during the recession, altogether 880 employees have been given notice after the mandatory company-level consultation.

Helsinki (19.04.2010 - Juhani Artto) Each year almost 4,000 young adults join the ranks of those classed as permanent disability pensioners. This is naturally very costly for society as a whole. The main loss is estimated to lie with the early termination of their working careers.

The extent and magnitude of the loss involved has been calculated by Guy Ahonen, a health economy expert at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. According to Ahonen, the loss, just taking into account those 16 to 34 year olds who became disability pensioners in 2008 alone, amounts to EUR6.6 billions. The figure reveals the missing value of their work performances from 2008 to the year when they reach the normal retirement age of 65.

Helsinki (31.03.2010 / edited 01.04.2010 – Juhani Artto) In recent years there has been no real rise in the "risk element" of working life in Finland but at the same time there has been no discernable improvement in this area either. This is the major result of the broad study on Finnish working life, published a week ago by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH).

"Hardly any progress was made nationally in occupational safety and health in the 2000s, when measured against trends in occupational accidents and sickness absence", researchers conclude. "On the other hand, good examples of the impact of improved occupational safety and health have also been set.

Separate studies suggest that workplaces are polarized as far as occupational safety and health are concerned. While best organizatons are actively developing this area, the weaker ones are at risk of a decline in standards."

The study is based on interviews, made in 2009, of about 3,000 working people from the ages of 20 to 64. Similar studies were made in 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2006. Trade Union News fromFinland publishes the English language summary of the 2009 study by permission of the FIOH.

Helsinki (10.03.2010 - Juhani Artto) In 2000 Fujitsu broke the law on corporate-level mandatory consultation when closing its pc factory in Espoo near Helsinki. This is the final verdict in the decade-long legal process between the company and eleven Finnish trade unions that represented 223 of the 450 dismissed employees.

Lower court decisions had favoured Fujitsu but on Monday the High Court decided the dispute in favour of the employees. The High Court concluded that Fujitsu had made the decision to close the factory prior to corporate mandatory consultation and thus were in breach of the legislation regulating corporate-level cooperation in the companies.

Helsinki (23.02.2010 - Juhani Artto) As in many other European countries, in Finland the government and employer organisations are pushing hard to raise the retirement age. The need to extend working careers is recognised also by the trade unions.

The reasons underlying the need for people to work longer are ultimately bound up with demographics. The age structure of Finnish people is among the oldest in the world. It means that the proportion of working age people is smaller than in most other countries. That creates a heavy economic burden not only on the pension system but on the whole national economy.

Helsinki (22.02.2010 - Juhani Artto) The Estonian service sector union ETKA has grown strongly over the past five years. The number of its rank and file members has risen at a rate of 10 per cent annually. Now, membership exceeds 1,000. Compared with the development of most other Estonian unions, ETKA has progressed well.

One of the factors behind the improvement has been the close cooperation with the Finnish union PAM (Service Union United PAM). ETKA and PAM began a common project five years ago, focusing on ETKA's organising and collective bargaining. The work has been successful, as ETKA has several company-specific collective agreements, and in addition, agreements on cooperation with some companies.

Helsinki (15.02.2010 - Juhani Artto) In several traditional industrial sectors the year 2009 was a sad year in Finland, as businesses ceased production and (almost certainly) closed their doors for the last time. That was the fate of manufacturers of men's suits, rubber boots, glass bottles and flat glass. All had been produced in Finland for generations.

The last factory to produce men's suits was recently closed down in Kuopio, although hundreds of thousands of men's suits are bought annually in Finland. The factory, belonging to Turo Tailor, established in 1938, was competitive in quality and by other criteria but not when it came to production costs.