Flexible working hours to suit the employee

The need for a general reduction in working hours has become an enduring topic of debate in Europe. The Prague congress of the European Trade Union Confederation - ETUC in May 2003 set a target of achieving a 35-hour working week. The Central Organisation of Trade Unions in Finland - SAK suggested together with the Finnish Confederation of Salaried Employees - STTK a 35-hour average working week an objective to the action programme of ETUC. The aim of the Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals in Finland - AKAVA was an even broader formulation for innovative working time arrangements. In the long term, however, these trade organisations are firmly committed to a flexible reduction in hours of work.

While SAK unions in certain industries are seeking to reduce the time spent at work, there are other SAK sectors, such as private services, where the problem is more about a chronic shortage of working hours. Indeed, the programme approved at the 2001 SAK delegate conference notes that the rank and file membership needs more than a mere call for generalised cuts in working hours. Even so, such reductions remain the long-term policy objective of SAK.

The notion of the average working week that is used by SAK and STTK refers to a scheme observed in Finland since 1984, whereby the employer must allow the employee an additional 100 hours, or about 12.5 days of paid leave in addition to the normal annual holiday. In the collective agreement for the Finnish engineering sector, for example, these extra days off will be used this year to achieve an average working week of 36.2 hours in daily and two-shift work, even though a regular 40-hour working week remains the norm for the industry.

The problem of short working shifts

The general incomes policy agreement reached between labour market organisations and the Finnish government for 2003-2004 includes an accord for the first time on a minimum four-hour working shift. This responds to a problem in the commercial sector, for example, where workers may be called in to work for only a few hours daily.

- The problem in the service sectors isn't so much that working hours are too long, but that they are too short. Also the working hours can be placed in an uncomfortable way during working day, for example, a couple of hours in the morning and some hours at the end of day. Employee incomes are often inadequate to cover their basic living expenses, comments Deputy Manager Ari Seger from SAK.

The incomes policy agreement also provides for the appointment of a working group to study the prospects for introducing a system of "working time accounts and banking", and to examine the limits of such arrangements. Such a system would entitle the employee to save days off and take them later. A working time account would thus enable an employee, for example, to collect days off and take a longer period of annual holiday. In industries with seasonal variation, it would correspondingly be possible for employees to work longer hours in response to increased demand for labour, but then to balance this with extra time off during quieter periods. Only about ten per cent of employees are currently able to use such working time accounting systems in Finland.

Expectations frustrated over working hours

Only about one in five (19 per cent) Finnish employees would be willing to work a shorter working week if this meant a cut in wages. On the other hand, one in six (17 per cent) would prefer a longer working week. These were the findings of a survey commissioned by the trade unions and published in spring 2003. An examination of the survey materials collected by Statistics Finland indicates that longer working hours were the aim of those in irregular employment relationships, employees under 30 years of age and workers heavily engaged in secondary occupations. Those seeking shorter working hours tended to be over 30, in full-time jobs and working a great deal of overtime.

One-third of all part-time workers in Finland were not engaged in such work by choice but had been unable to secure full-time employment. The rate of such "involuntary" part-time work in Finland is twice the European Union average. Nearly half (49 per cent) of the members of SAK-affiliated trade unions who were in part-time work fall into this "involuntary" category.

10 per cent of employees gave their normal working week as 40 hours, and five per cent indicated that they normally work more than 48 hours a week. Just under half of all overtime work is done by employees who are not union members, who represent less than 20 per cent of the workforce in Finland.