Photo: Folio (Gorilla)
New collective agreement for the commerce sector gives similar pay rise as the other pay deals this year
On 2 February, Service Union United PAM and the Finnish Commerce Federation adopted a new collective agreement for the commerce sector.
It will mean an increase in wages, working hour bonuses and shop stewards’ compensation by 2 per cent as of 1 May 2022.
The collective agreement is valid from 1 February 2022 to 31 January 2024 and the pay rise for the second year will be negotiated before 15 December this year.
In collective agreements made earlier during this current round of negotiations other sectors have seen pay rises of between 1.8 and 2.0 per cent for this year. The PAM agreement thus hits the upper ceiling reached so far this year.
“I consider the result reasonable and am pleased that we could come to an agreement”, says Annika Rönni-Sällinen, PAM president, in the union press release. At the same time she stresses how employer coordination is increasing year by year.
In the new collective agreement, among other things, the minimum length of daily rest has been prolonged, single days off between night shifts have been banned and the minimum number of double day leaves has been increased.
The employers’ association describe the new agreement as moderate, but stress that in the future broader, structural changes are needed in order to develop the competitiveness of the branch.
Besides the collective agreement for the commerce sector, the parties also adopted the collective agreement for supervisors in retail, the collective agreement for warehouse and logistics supervisors, as well as the protocol for commerce sector ICT officers, and the protocol for Hankkija’s sales personnel.
In total, the new collective agreements cover the terms of work for up to 200,000 employees, mainly in retail trade.
In 2019, PAM negotiated 33 collective agreements. Out of these, 18 were of a generally binding nature, 4 normally binding—i.e.valid for the companies that are members of the employers’ association that signed the agreement—and 12 company-specific.
PAM’s membership in the commerce sector is about 65 per cent.
Read more about the collective agreement negotiations on Trade Union News from Finland.
Heikki Jokinen, freelancer