Archive

Helsinki (27.10.2009 - Juhani Artto) In Finland the grey economy is a smaller problem than in most countries in the world. However, since the mid 1990s it has grown to be a real pest. It creates problems for companies who operate honestly and in compliance with the law and additionally deprives the state of billions of euros in tax money and social security payments each year. 

According to experts, the problem tends to get even worse in times of economic recession, such as the present one.

It is obvious that -in order to tackle the grey economy effectively- legislation needs to be updated and the authorities, responsible for ensuring laws are upheld, must be allocated more resources for this task. In this respect things do not look promising, in the near future at any rate, as the government of Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen has not been very responsive to such demands.

Helsinki (13.10.2009 - Juhani Artto) The Electrical Workers' Union and the Union of Salaried Employees announced on Monday that they had agreed on much closer cooperation. The goal is to increase their bargaining power. The two organisations also want to intensify cooperation in internal and external communication, training and international work.

Around half of the rank and file members of the two unions have common employers in industry, the energy sector, the ICT sector, and in the construction industry. Martti Alakoski, the president of the Electrical Workers Union regards close cooperation between the unions as only natural because at many work places it is difficult to draw the line between work done by electricians and by salaried employees.

Helsinki (12.10.2009 - Juhani Artto) By 2019 more than a third of the 437,000 municipal workers will retire. In the future, development and provision of services may prove to be even more difficult for municipal organisations as the increasingly stressful work may compel more employees to seek early retirement than predicted.

The worst prospects concern cleaning. By 2019 over half of the municipal cleaners will retire. The health and home care sectors will also face huge recruitment requirements. Almost half of hospital and home care assistants will retire in ten years.

Helsinki (12.10.2009 - Juhani Artto) Two industrial unions that have their roots in the 19th century will amalgamate. They are the Chemical Workers' Union and the Media Union. The new union, TEAM, will have 67,000 rank-and -file members, which makes it the fifth largest union in the union confederation SAK. Officially TEAM will start functioning on 1 January 2010.

The final formal decisions completing the merger will be made on 13 November 2009 by the extraordinary congress of the Media Union and on 26-27 November 2009 by the general council of the Chemical Workers' Union.

Helsinki (05.10.2009 - Juhani Artto) It is difficult to understand why so few companies have invested so little -in terms of their risk management strategies- when it comes to looking after employees' brain and mind, says research professor Kiti Müller. She is the director of the Brain and Work Research Centre at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. 

However, when asked, she has an explanation for this, which she, herself, finds utterly unsatisfactory. The situation goes hand-in-hand with the fact that -until now- one has not been able to measure objectively and reliably the overall brain load level.

They are caused, for example, by cognitively demanding work tasks combined with internal, human related factors, such as lack of sleep or coexisting chronic diseases (diabetes, sleeping disorders, mental stress etc.). Therefore, company managers, used to paying attention only to measurable variables have ignored findings and lessons to be learned offered by brain researchers.

Helsinki (21.09.2009 - Juhani Artto) Service Union United PAM had, at the end of 2008, almost 3,600 rank and file members whose mother language was other than any of the domestic language in Finland: Finnish, Swedish or Sami. Russian speakers represented the largest foreign language group, with 1,112 members.

The other large language groups were made up of Estonian speakers (655 members), English speakers (448), Thai speakers (125) and Chinese speakers (120). In PAM more than 50 languages were spoken as mother tongues.

Members, coming from a foreign background, represented less than 1.7 per cent of the union's total membership (213,380) but the union regards defence of their rights as very important. New evidence of this became public in August when the union approved its first immigration policy programme.

Helsinki (08.09.2009 - Juhani Artto) As a whole, in Finland, companies, municipalities and the state invest far too little in the well-being of their employees. This is the major conclusion of a new study*. To become economically rational, business, municipal and government organisations should spend several times more on the well-being of their employees than they do now.

According to Guy Ahonen, one of the three researchers who carried out the study, the analysis represents a new type of study-the first of its kind in the world- on employees' well-being. The novelty is that the study covers all well-being-related investments within work organisations.

The conclusion is based on two calculations/estimates.

Helsinki (02.09.2009 - Juhani Artto) The Construction Trade Union and the Finnish Consumers' Association have reached good results in their two-year campaign to change the eating habits of construction workers and students. During the campaign, three well-informed young workers visited hundreds of construction sites and schools to bring their message on what's good and what's bad in daily diets and eating habits.

They met face-to-face over 25,000 workers and students. Last spring, some 500 of them filled in the questionnaire outlining their impressions and reactions to the lessons given by the three promoters. Those who were asked to fill out the questionnaire had met the promoters on at least two occasions.

Five out of six reported positive changes. The most common change was for the participants to eat more vegetables, fruit and berries. 59 per cent belonged to this group. Almost as many again (58 per cent) had begun to eat less fast food.

Helsinki (31.08.2009 - Juhani Artto) The headline is taken from a recent column* written by Jyrki Raina, the Finn who in May was elected as the new General Secretary of the International Metalworkers' Federation. In the column he refers to the struggles which the IMF has recently been involved in, from Thailand to Russia and from South Korea to Mexico. No doubt the huge organisation, embracing 25 million rank and file members, and organised in 200 trade unions in over 100 countries, never sleeps.

But just how effective is this organisation and that of its umbrella organ, the IMF which has its head office in Geneva in Switzerland? "I was elected to the post since a large majority of IMF's affiliated unions want to have a more effective and more visible global federation", Raina writes.

Helsinki (Risto Rumpunen - 17.08.2009) A group of Chinese cleaners and a Finnish job recruitment company are set to battle it out in the Finnish courts. And the backdrop to this story is that Chinese jobseekers have apparently paid huge fees to work in Finland in low wage jobs. Some jobseekers haven't even got the jobs they were promised when they left China for Finland.

In China, job-hiring agencies explained to the hopeful Chinese seeking employment in Finland that the lion’s share of the excessive recruitment fees they are obliged to pay would go to Finnish companies. Meanwhile Finnish job recruitment companies deny this and claim that they cannot take any responsibility for the actions of Chinese companies. So who gets the money?