Incomes policy negotiations begin despite differences in outlook

The process of formulating a comprehensive economic and incomes policy settlement in Finland began with a meeting of negotiators on Tuesday 2 November. The negotiators also met with representatives of the Finnish government. The country's main labour confederations are seeking an accord on a broad range of issues, including improvements in employee security in the event of workforce downsizing and implementation of subscriber liability arrangements of the kind already existing in many European countries.

The parties are now even further divided on issues such as the manner of implementing pay rises. The employers would like to devolve a greater proportion of pay questions to the level of individual enterprises. The two largest labour confederations, SAK and STTK, have announced their determination to retain the system of centralised solidarity pay scales, whereby increases across the board are based in principle on the average improvement in productivity of the national economy.

The bargaining process began after the employers gave up their initial reluctance to come to the negotiating table. The employee confederations have remained willing to launch the national bargaining round throughout. The time remaining for reaching an accord is now short. A negotiating group of labour market leaders is now due to meet several times this week. The objective is to negotiate a settlement by the beginning of December.

Employees seek improved security where redundancies threaten

In a meeting on Monday the Board of SAK decided that the organisation would seek an incomes policy settlement lasting about two years with a view to supporting employment levels and improving solidarity, pay and purchasing power.

The main objective of SAK in the bargaining round is to improve the security of employees in situations of workforce downsizing. The organisation insists that the employers must assume greater social and financial responsibility for the costs of dismissals. SAK is proposing that a programme to facilitate employment should be prepared for workers under threat of dismissal, and that the employer should defray the costs of such a programme. In addition to unemployment benefit, workers falling within the scope of the employment programme who then lose their jobs would be entitled to support from a fund that the employers would finance collectively.

Subscriber liability to secure outstanding pay and tax revenues

Another important qualitative objective of SAK is to increase the liability of labour subscribers and secure generalised locus standi for trade unions. Subscriber liability seeks to ensure compliance with statutes and collective agreements, for example where work is performed by subcontractors or leased labour, or in the case of outsourcing. The basic idea is for the party that commissions or subscribes to the work to bear ultimate liability for ensuring that employees are paid the collectively agreed rates for their work and that society receives the associated taxes and social security contributions.

Subscriber liability should also be accompanied by an independent generalised locus standi for trade unions. This would enable the unions to intervene in cases of malpractice, even when the employees concerned are unwilling to claim their rights for one reason or another.

One further ambition of SAK in the current bargaining round is to improve the status of elected employee representatives. The employee confederation is particularly concerned to improve the rights of shop stewards to information and to reinforce the position of labour protection delegates.

Ground rules for productivity bonuses

SAK feels that the incomes bargaining round should also be an opportunity to agree on common ground rules for productivity bonuses. It is in this area that the employee confederation believes room can be found for the enterprise-specific flexible payroll allowances envisioned by the employers. In the past, however, the employers have resisted all efforts to reach a working accord on productivity bonuses. SAK has postponed its decision on objectives for purchasing power and pay increases.

More information about the incomes policy negotiations in Finnish: www.sak.fi/tupo.