In the middle of May an equal pay programme was published in Finland, seeking to reduce the wage disparity between women and men by at least five percentage points by the year 2015. The programme includes measures focusing on remuneration systems and on wage and collective bargaining policies in general, redressing the gender imbalance in industries dominated by men or women, career development of women, temporary work, gender equality planning, harmonising work and family life, improving the compilation of statistics and enhancing the social responsibility of businesses and organisations.
The present Finnish government was already committed to preparing an equal pay programme. This governing coalition of the Centre Party, Social Democratic Party and Swedish People's Party is also otherwise committed to gender equality issues, as a reform of the Act on Equality Between Women and Men completed earlier this year includes a provision requiring all businesses with 30 employees or more to prepare a gender equality plan.
The new programme was prepared by a committee including representatives of both sides of industry and the government. Its implementation will be monitored by a working group of similar composition appointed by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.
According to Marja Erkkilä, the Gender Equality Secretary at the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions &#;8211 SAK, the equal pay programme has good prospects of success:
"The equal pay programme is the outcome of a political initiative, and the active involvement of the government in preparing and monitoring the programme will add a great deal of weight to this work." She adds that the programme also gains strength from the fact that it was unanimously approved by all three interest groups involved in the preparatory stages.
The motivation for the new equal pay programme lies in the fact that wage differentials between women and men have remained largely unchanged for several years in Finland. Over the last twenty years the earnings of women have been approximately 80 per cent of those of men.
Women's earnings as a percentage of men's earnings
(average basic earnings of employees by sector)
Year Total Private Central Local sector governm. governm.1985 79 76 80 831990 80 77 83 831991 81 78 83 851992 81 78 83 861993 81 79 84 851994 81 79 82 851995 82 81 81 851996 82 82 80 851997 82 82 81 851998 82 82 81 851999 82 82 81 852000 82 83 81 852001 82 83 81 842002 82 83 81 84
The primary objective of the programme is to work towards the equal pay required by the European Union and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), meaning equal pay for work of equal value performed for the same employer. This goal was already defined in the reform of the Act on Equality Between Women and Men that was approved earlier in the spring. The requirements of the revised Act now include preparing a review of the job classification, pay and pay differentials of women and men.
The equal pay programme will include efforts to improve pay and job evaluation systems enabling more effective comparison of job requirements between collective bargaining sectors. Marja Erkkilä explains that this will clearly facilitate pay comparisons:
"The employers have been unwilling to compare wage differentials between men and women working under different collective agreements. It is important to be aware of these differences, however, as in practice men and women working for the same employer are often covered by different collective agreements. In local government, for example, most employees providing social and health care or cleaning services are women, and their pay is governed by a different collective agreement than the pay of men, who in turn form the great majority of employees in technical positions."
Marja Erkkilä also expresses satisfaction at the concrete character of the new equal pay programme. The programme contains more than 30 action proposals and a large number of quantitative objectives and deadlines. Its general objective is to reduce the wage disparity between women and men by at least five percentage points by the year 2015. Other quantitative objectives or specific deadlines include:
Marja Erkkilä believes that the revised Act on Equality between Women and Men and the new equal pay programme together constitute the most important reform for many years seeking to reduce male-female wage differentials in Finland. Implementing the new Act and the programme will call for several years of work.
"Direct implementation at workplaces will be the most important thing in successfully carrying through these reforms," Marja Erkkilä stresses.