Archive

Helsinki (28.08.2003 - Juhani Artto) June, July and August are the months in which working Finnish people spend most of their annual leave. Both in the late 1980s and the late 1990s 71 per cent of annual leave was spent during the three Summer months.

July is by far the most popular holiday month. Its share expanded from 40 per cent to 44 per cent in 1987-2000. June became less popular, falling from 18 per cent to 8 per cent over this period. At the same time August won favour as a holiday month. Its share increased from 13 per cent to 19 per cent.

The main reason for the changes in the June and August proportions has been the increasing internationalisation of business and other spheres of life. Finnish organisations and individuals have increasingly felt pressure to follow the holiday timing of Western European countries.

Helsinki (21.08.2003 - Daryl Taylor) Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Lahti seminar weekend (read the Trunf report on it) was the choice of main theme. There is probably some truth in the cynical observation that Finland’s trade union mainstream has only taken an active interest in the welfare of immigrants since it became clear that many of these workers could not be kept out of the Finnish labour market following European Union enlargement, and would therefore be able to compete with Finns for jobs in Finland.

Thus we have the slightly paradoxical situation that Finland’s largest labour confederation SAK established an office in Tallinn, Estonia, to advise prospective migrants about their rights in the Finnish labour market while simultaneously seeking to negotiate transition periods impeding the mobility of labour from the new Member States. To their credit, however, Finland’s unions have now understood the point that it is important to recruit these newcomers into union membership as quickly as possible.

Helsinki (21.08.2003 - Juhani Artto) How are immigrants treated in the Finnish labour market? The size and character of Finland’s immigrant population has now reached the point at which it has become possible to draw a realistic and diversified picture of the labour market situation. Despite various well-meaning efforts to improve the status of immigrant labour over the last few years, the situation is generally poor. The picture painted by immigrants themselves is gloomier even than the Finns care to admit.

This was well illustrated at the weekend seminar of the Trade Union Solidarity Centre of Finland (SASK) in the southern Finnish city of Lahti in April. This event gathered some 600 union activists from all parts of the country and from all industries. One in ten of the participants were of foreign origin but living permanently in Finland.

While immigrant speakers at the seminar gave crushing testimony of both covert and open ethnic discrimination, the descriptions of their individual and collective struggle also gave cause for some optimism. Several speakers were also able to report successes in the fight against ethnic discrimination.

Helsinki (18.06.2003 - Juhani Artto) A new study indicates that distance working has only marginally reduced work-related traffic and the consequent burden on the environment. This conflicts with the expectations that were entertained when job structure changes and new technologies began to create conditions for distance working.

The study, based on interviews with 19,000 working people, exposes that in 2001 only about five per cent of those in work were engaged in distance working. Experts suggest that the potential for distance working is much larger than this, and could rise to as much as 40 per cent of all jobs.

This wide discrepancy between actual and potential distance working was not the most surprising discovery of the study, however. It was even more important to note that people engaged in distance working visited their workplaces at enterprises almost daily.

Helsinki (01.06.2003 - Juhana Vartiainen**) Before the March parliamentary elections in Finland political parties described their goals and presented their promises. Civil servants, researchers and central banks are often of the opinion that election promises are too generous and that "we cannot afford them". Yet it is striking to notice how much more grudging both promises and programmes have become in the last 10 to 15 years.

Until the 1980s the enlargement and construction of the welfare state was in full swing. New services were created, social security was expanded, pensions were increased and child allowances grew. Compared with these old good days, the entire welfare policy now looks rather anaemic and tight-fisted - and the political parties may seem quite similar as the differences between their reform demands are ultimately rather marginal.

What reasons lie behind this change towards a less generous policy? Many people believe that this is due to a process of "globalisation" that forces Finnish enterprises to compete in an international market so that "we can no longer afford" the welfare state that we used to have. However, it is self-deception to lay the blame on globalisation in this way. There is nothing new in globalisation: for a century welfare in Finland has been based on the country’s participation in the international division of labour.

Helsinki (19.05.2003 - Juhani Artto) Finland is one of a handful of countries where a large majority of wage and salary earners have joined trade unions. A new survey* published in February 2003 indicates that the organising rate in 2001 was over 70 per cent. Comparison with the previous survey reviewing the situation in 1994 sends a warning signal to the union movement, however. In seven years the organising rate has fallen by about 7 percentage points.

Over two million trade unionists in a nation of five million people

At the end of 2001 affiliates to the three central trade union confederations had a total of 2,082,265 rank and file members. The Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions - SAK (25 unions) had 51.1 per cent of these, while the Finnish Confederation of Salaried Employees – STTK (22 unions) had 29.4 per cent and the Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals in Finland – Akava (33 unions) had 19.5 per cent.

Helsinki (04.05.2003 - Juhani Artto) Nokia Networks, the infrastructure arm of Nokia Plc, announced in April that it plans to cut 1,100 jobs in Finland. The reductions will occur in R&D, operations, sales, marketing and support functions. The goal is to reduce costs, improve profitability and strengthen the company’s position in the mobile infrastructure business.

Finnish Metalworkers Union President Erkki Vuorenmaa says that the move demonstrates a mismatch between Nokia’s declared values and its concrete behaviour. Vuorenmaa points out that the enterprise argument for extensive job reductions and redundancies rests purely on improving profitability, which means meeting shareholder expectations.

In the course of codetermination negotiations on the proposed measure Vuorenmaa is calling for Nokia’s leadership to consider what is most important to the enterprise: maintaining the highest possible profit margin or retaining skilled and able employees in preparation for the coming high business cycle.

Helsinki (28.04.2003 - Peter J. Boldt) "Stupid," was the comment of European Commission President Romano Prodi a while ago on the EMU Stability and Growth Pact. This arrangement does not allow the public sector deficit to exceed three per cent of GNP. As the highest guardian of the European Union founding treaties, Prodi should not have been allowed to make such a statement, but he chose to publish his point of view in his civilian capacity as a professor of economics.

When SAK economists have criticised the Stability Pact over the years, most Finnish economists have regarded us as irresponsible and ignorant.

Nowadays, however, it is widely admitted, even at the European Commission, that the Stability Pact is not working. The strict deficit restriction prevents active finance policy precisely when it is most urgently needed, i.e. when growth slows down and unemployment grows.

Helsinki (13.04.2003 - Juhani Artto) Present and former trade union members form a clear majority of the new Finnish Parliament elected in mid-March. Of the 200 seats, at least 120 were won by candidates who are either present or former members of unions. This is roughly the same proportion of trade union representation as in the March 1999 election result.

The preponderance of MPs with a union background is hardly surprising, as the organising rate in Finland is among the highest in the world. Another reason behind the electoral success of unionised candidates is the strong support given by national unions and their local branches to their own members.

The smallest of the three main labour confederations, Akava, which mainly organises the academically qualified, has the largest representation in Parliament. According to Akava, at least one third of the new MPs are present or former members of its affiliated unions. 28 of these were teachers before entering politics. Other academic trades with sizeable representation are doctors, lawyers and technical specialists.

Helsinki (24.03.2003 - Juhani Artto) Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are due to become EU Member States on 1 May 2004. The forthcoming accession of the Baltic countries has increased interest within the Finnish trade union movement in the progress that these countries are making in working life. This has fostered both worries and positive expectations, depending on which aspects of working life and European Union membership conditions are discussed.

A new study*, published in March by the Finnish Ministry of Labour, thoroughly updates the analysis of working life in these three countries. In an opening summary the researchers list the following key points:

1. "Normalisation" in Estonia

The evolution of working life in Estonia in recent years has been quite continuous and steady, and has also been favourable on the whole. The trend has been towards 'normalisation', including cuts in excessively long working hours – and thus in overtime, less unofficial work in the grey economy, fewer delays in salary payments, and a narrowing of salary differentials between men and women. One significant problem, however, is that workers still have few opportunities to influence their own jobs.