Archive

Helsinki (22.11.2003 - Juhani Artto) Finland is tightening its measures to control the abuse of migrant labour. This is largely due to the demands made in recent years by the trade union movement. The movement has fought for reforms that will help to prevent the creation and growth of a grey labour market. Many responsible employers have also echoed the calls to combat migrant labour abuse in the form of substandard working conditions and denial to workers of even the most elementary rights. Law-abiding employers regard such abuse as unfair competition that impairs the competitiveness of their own businesses.

Cases of abuse have so far mainly been exposed in the construction, hotel and catering industries, but cases have also occurred in several other industries, such as road haulage, engineering workshops and harbours. Most of the abused workers have been either Estonians or Russians. These two nationalities also form the largest groups in the legal migrant labour force.

Helsinki (17.11.2003 - Juhani Artto) In early November Finland's largest trade union confederation SAK submitted a new initiative to expand the scope of the Finnish consensus policy. SAK proposes that the labour market organisations in various industries should prepare common survival and growth strategies. The goals would be to bring the country into a phase of rapid economic growth, create new jobs and prevent mass redundancies and the loss of jobs to other countries.

"The strategies must ensure that Finland remains a good place for wage and salary earners to live and a good place for investors to operate their production and services," SAK observes. The organisation points out that Finland will need more rapid growth than the rest of the euro zone, as the ageing of the population structure is set to progress more steeply in Finland than elsewhere in Europe, and as the country's unemployment rate remains high:

"The loss of almost 25,000 industrial jobs in only one year and the modest increase in service jobs require a new kind of co-operation."

Helsinki (14.11.2003 - Juhani Artto) Businesses and many other organisations regularly outsource the cleaning services for their offices and other operating points. It is common to award the contract to the cheapest tender. In a recent statement Finland's largest trade union confederation SAK warns of the negative consequences of this practise.

Experts agree that this approach has led to lower standards of cleanliness at places of work. This is not the most economic way to manage property, but there are worse consequences beyond this in terms of employee health.

According to the Finnish Allergy and Asthma Association, some 15 to 20 per cent of Finns suffer from allergic head colds, and 5 per cent of these develop into asthma when left untreated. Lower standards of cleanliness at places of work increase this risk. Failure to clean higher levels and ventilation ducts has become commonplace, which increases the concentration of dust and dirt in breathing air.

Helsinki 22.10.2003 (VATT NYT 1-2003) Compared to other industrialised countries, productivity growth in Finland has been very rapid indeed. Productivity in industry rose in the late 1990s to a level almost equal to that of the USA. Productivity in other branches of the private sector also grew more rapidly than in comparable countries. In transport and communications, for example, Finland already surpassed the USA in the late 1990s.

Over the period from 1975 to 2000 the productivity of Finland's national economy grew by an average of 3.1 per cent annually. The average annual rise in productivity during the era of comprehensive incomes policy agreements from 1966 to 2000 was 3.5 per cent.

This growth was especially marked in industry, with an average of 5.6 per cent annually between 1975 and 2000. The rapid rise in industrial productivity growth in the latter half of the 1990s was mainly due to expansion of the electronics industry. Annual productivity in this sector grew by almost 20 per cent between 1996 and 2000. Other industrial sectors recorded average annual growth in productivity of only 2.6 per cent.

Helsinki (18.09.2003 - Eeva Simola) Finnish engine manufacturer Wartsila Ltd is caught up in Sweden's largest ever bribery prosecution, local dailies report. According to the public prosecutor, "it is clear that Wartsila offered bribes to secure orders". Wartsila admits the payments but says these were for consulting services. Finland's public prosecutor is now considering the case.

The Swedish shipping line Rederi AB Gotland operates ferries between Gotland island and mainland Sweden. This company recently commissioned two superfast ferries from a Chinese shipyard. Wartsila supplied a total of eight main engines and six auxiliary engines for these vessels, together with propellers for one of them. The orders totalled EUR 25-30 million. The M/S Visby began operating this year.

Wartsila concluded two brokerage agreements with Euro Marine Ltd. This company was represented and partly owned by the main suspect in the corruption case, Bo Pettersson, who served as Technical Director at the shipping company. Wartsila paid some EUR 1.1 million in two instalments in 2000 and 2001 to Pettersson's private Swiss bank account.

Helsinki (11.09.2003 - Juhani Artto) About 4,000 people work in Finnish laundries, but many of these jobs are now under threat. The low wages in Estonia, which is just across the Gulf of Finland and only a few hours sailing from Helsinki, pose a difficult challenge to Finnish workers.

Recently one of the biggest users of laundry services, the Silja Line passenger ferry company, relocated its laundry services from Finland to the Estonian capital Tallinn. This followed a successful tender from the Granlund laundry service. Dozens of jobs may be lost in Finland because of this.

In autumn several large hotel chains will negotiate new laundry service contracts. Finnish workers now fear the loss of more work to competitors in Estonia. Some of these competitors are subsidiaries of enterprises based in Finland.

Helsinki (04.09.2003 - Juhani Artto) The proportion of part-time workers has slowly increased in Finland. Over the period from 1989 to 2002 it grew from 8.9 per cent of all wage and salary earners to 12.6 per cent. Among women the proportion increased from 12.6 per cent to 17.2 per cent, and among men from 5.2 per cent to 7.7 per cent.

Among women part-time work is more common in the private sector than in the public sector. One fifth of private sector female employees work part-time.

In commerce 33.4 per cent of female employees worked part-time in 2002. In the hotel and catering industry 32.7 per cent of women had a part-time job, while the corresponding figure for cleaning and other property maintenance services was 31.0 per cent. The corresponding figures for men were 9.7, 24.0 and 14.1 per cent.

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.