In comparison with other European countries, Finnish fundamental rights have been generally well secured. The right to organise is enshrined in law, as is that of collective bargaining. There is in any case a strong Finnish tradition of collective bargaining. There are two reasons for this:

Firstly, in Finland both the employees and the employers are well organised. The organisation rate of the employees exceeds 80 per cent, whilst the employers are also highly organised. In addition, there is effective internal cooperation within both the employees' and employers' organisations and externally between these social partners.

Secondly, since the late 1960's, any important labour market issue has been subject to negotiation between the social partners and the Government. Such tripartite negotiations are characteristic of the Finnish labour market culture. Centralised bargaining for pay settlements is the norm and these settlements are frequently augmented by the Government with accompanying new legislation for lower taxation or for other benefits.

It can thus be said that the national labour market in Finland is stable. None of the social partners have felt any need to change the Finnish labour market practice to any significant degree. Nevertheless, on the occasions that the trade unions have wished to exercise their right to strike, the employers have invariably called for some degree of limitation of this right to take industrial action.

Sympathy strikes are legal in Finland, but during this spring the employers were angered by the eagerness with which some unions started industrial action in support of workers who were on strike in another sector of industry. The leaders of the employers' confederations are currently demanding that sympathy strikes should be prohibited. The trade union movement does not see any need for this and it does not accept any limitations, by either national or international regulations, on the right to take industrial action. As it happens however, the number of strikes has progressively decreased over the years.

None of the above means, however, that the Finnish trade union movement would consider the current rights of the trade unions to be sufficient for the future. Finland is a country with an open economy. The percentage of foreign trade in the GDP is high, and multinational companies operate in Finland just as they do in the other European countries. The strengthening of the EU internal market eases the path of the multinational business. Membership of EMU governs any national monetary policy and thus increases the dependency of the economic policy of any one country on that of the other euro countries.

The Finnish trade union movement has thus come to realise that, in the representation of the interests of the membership, in addition to national trade union rights, multinational rights are now needed, firstly perhaps on the EU level. This could also improve the position of the trade union movement in the current trend towards the globalisation of the world economy.

SAK fully endorses the ETUC goal of the inclusion of fundamental rights in the Treaty establishing the European Community. The Finnish trade union movement participates, in many ways, in the ETUC campaign for fundamental rights. It is important for us to gain the rights to operate on a multinational level whilst simultaneously securing, on the national level, our own tried and tested labour market model.