Full speed ahead for collective bargaining in Finland

Finland&#;8217s trade unions are currently negotiating intensively to revise their collective agreements. Most of these agreements over the last seven years were concluded within the framework of national incomes policy settlements, but this time no such settlement has been reached.

Since February 2005 over 90 per cent of Finnish wage and salary earners have been covered by collective agreements based on the comprehensive income policy settlement reached in November 2004 by the union confederations and the employer association umbrella organisations.

The collective agreements of the 2005 bargaining round expire on 30 September 2007. Earlier this year a few industrial employer associations made it clear that they do not support efforts to negotiate another comprehensive incomes policy agreement at confederation level. Instead they approached their union counterparts and proposed negotiations for new agreements that would take effect even before the summer holidays beginning in late June.

Negotiations were actually completed before the summer holiday break for 16 collective agreements, mostly covering SAK-affiliated trade unions in industrial sectors. The new agreements concluded by the Finnish Metalworkers’ Union, Chemical Workers’ Union and Electrical Workers’ Union will last for about two and a half years and bring pay rises totalling about 9 per cent. In addition to these increases, the unions that began the new bargaining round also secured lump sum bonuses of EUR 200-350 for their members.

Most of the SAK-affiliated unions still negotiating their collective agreements are seeking similar pay rises to those secured in industry. Nearly all of the unions also aim to improve the status of employee representatives and discourage irregular and casual employment in their sectors. The unions believe that strengthening the position of shop stewards and other staff representatives is a fundamental condition for the expansion in local collective bargaining that is one of the prime objective of the employers in the current bargaining round.

The earliest deadline for completing negotiations is in the local government sector, which is seeking to reach a settlement during the first week of September. Most other SAK affiliates would like to have a new settlement in place before their current collective agreements terminate at the end of September, when the old national incomes policy settlement has finally run its course.

The agreements concluded by unions that stayed outside of that national settlement will begin to expire in the first half of next year. This means that SAK-affiliated trade unions will continue to be engaged in collective bargaining some way into next spring.