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A new comprehensive incomes policy agreement for Finland was signed on Friday 15 December
2000. The agreement covers about two million wage-earners, comprising some 90 per cent of
Finnish employees. The new agreement was signed by all of the central employee
confederations except AKAVA, which represents academically qualified professionals.
Despite the failure of their parent organisation to sign, however, unions representing a
large proportion of the AKAVA membership base have also negotiated collective agreements
that are in line with the general agreement.More
than ten thousand employees organised under the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade
Unions – SAK dockworkers, electricians in the energy sector and locomotive drivers
will fall outside of the new accord for one year. The aviation and foodstuffs sectors also
remain outside of the new deal, but these employees are covered by existing long-term
agreements of broadly similar content. The coverage of the new agreement in the industries
organised under SAK is as much as 97 per cent.
Of academically qualified professionals, nursery school
teachers, librarians, psychologists, social workers, doctors and airline pilots declined
to sign up to the new agreement. With the exception of workers in the insurance sector,
the salaried employees' confederation STTK was broadly behind the new package.
The Board of SAK considers the new accords to be quite
solid. While their general impact on costs will be about 3.1 per cent, the structure of
the agreement ensures significantly higher increases in low-pay sectors with a majority of
women workers. Increases for shopworkers, restaurant floor staff and textile industry
workers, for example, will be about 3.7 per cent. The corresponding increases in
industries with a majority of male workers will be about 2.8 per cent.
Employers hesitant
The industrial employers' confederation expressed some
reluctance to proceed in the final stages of the negotiations, expressing worries that the
dockworkers and key energy sector workers will remain outside of the agreement for one
year. These workers are crucial to the smooth operation of industry in Finland. The
willingness of the dockworkers to join in the agreement was undermined by news of
redundancies in the Ports of Hamina and Kotka, where the jobs of some 30 employees are in
jeopardy.
As existing agreements covering the dockworkers and energy
sector electricians will continue to ensure freedom from industrial unrest until the
beginning of 2002, the industrial employers' representatives were finally persuaded to
sign an exceptionally broadly-based incomes policy agreement.
Leena Seretin |
