Unions ready to launch a comprehensive collective bargaining round
Negotiations towards new collective agreements in Finland are beginning to get off the ground just now in practically all branches.
The broad labour market pact, or the so called competitiveness pact, was drafted between employer’s associations and trade union confederations at the end of February.
The trade unions have been busy deliberating over the pact and almost all of them have now agreed to open negotiations on their collective agreements in order to implement the changes agreed in the national pact.
More than 90 per cent of employees covered
This means that the national pact now covers more than 90 per cent of Finnish employees. The biggest unions to say no to the pact are the Finnish Construction Trade Union, the Finnish Food Workers’ Union and the Transport Workers’ Union.
The decision was a very difficult one for the biggest Finnish union, Service Union United PAM. With a membership of many part time, low paid women in service jobs the Union was torn over the 24 unpaid extra hours a year, as set down in the national pact. In the end PAM also decided to agree to start negotiations on their collective agreements.
There are some 300 collective agreements to be negotiated before the end of May. Following on from that the Government will see whether the reformed collective agreements go far enough in cutting companies expenses and thus negate the need for planned heavy austerity measures.
On what issues are the unions negotiating?
What are the main issues in this collective agreement round? One issue is to extend annual working time by 24 extra working hours with zero impact on earnings. The ways in how to do this will vary in every branch, as the collective agreements are very different.
Spread evenly over the whole year this would mean a six minute longer working day, but this is unlikely to happen. In jobs with a 40 hour week this would also be impossible, as it is the legal maximum weekly amount of working hours.
Instead, some of the existing holidays might be made into working days without any changes in salaries.
How to add 24 hours a year for those with a part time job is a difficult and completely open question, too.
Another major issue is how to improve conditions for local collective bargaining at the company level. The national pact highlights the need for this in rather vague and general terms in the paragraphs devoted to this question and the unions will now have a really demanding task in figuring out how to accommodate this.
The most difficult issue will be the so called survival clause. According to the pact, it should ”help secure the employer’s operations and jobs by adjusting terms and conditions of employment when the employer runs into financial difficulties that jeopardise jobs”.
How and under which conditions this will be managed is a question that will need a lot of negotiation. The point of departure for trade unions and employers are thus very far apart especially on this issue.
Heikki Jokinen